It’s Black History Month, and it has an anthem too many people don’t know

It’s “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the just-over-a century-old poem set to music that first was intended to be a tribute to the memory of Abraham Lincoln but later became known as the “Negro National Anthem” – then later the black anthem after “negro” fell out of fashion.

The reporter-type person in me often hears the tune sung as part of the program at any type of black-oriented rally I cover, and it is a sweet little tune about people rising above the status in life that some in society would just as soon see them limited to.

BUT IT ALSO is so isolated within our culture. Way too often, non-black people don’t have a clue about the song.

I once recall an editor many years ago that there was “no such song” as the black anthem. He certainly had never heard of it.

Of course, I was equally as clueless. Although I remember as a kid hearing that there was some sort of song considered to be a “black anthem,” the first time I ever heard the song was an instance many years ago at the Cook County Jail.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was at the jail to give an inspirational talk to the inmates in hopes he could motivate them to get their lives straightened out and make something of themselves.

IT WAS QUITE a sense to be in a gymnasium within the jail and hear inmates singing along to the old gospel-inspired tune, although I don’t know how many of those inmates got the civil rights leader’s message and rehabilitated themselves.

It would be nice to think they did. But we’ll never know.

I most recently heard the tune (or at least a verse of it) this week when the Common Council of Gary, Ind., chose to start off their twice-monthly meeting Wednesday by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance – then singing the anthem.

'Anthem' started as part of Lincoln tribute

Considering that Gary has an overwhelming share of its population (84 percent) as African-American individuals, it shouldn’t be shocking. The ‘black anthem’ certainly wouldn’t be out of place.

ALTHOUGH I ALSO wonder in today’s overly-partisan political times how many people would think it somehow subversive that anybody would think to sing such a tune.

For all I know, the people who go around wearing those chintzy, red “Make America Great Again” caps are probably amongst those who try to deny that a ‘black anthem’ exists and that we’d all be better off forgetting there was ever a need for such a tune.

Particularly when one considers that several of the local government officials chose to wear African-inspired garb as part of a Black History Month tribute, I’m sure the site would have offended the sensibilities of some.

Mostly those whose political leanings are such that the real way to make this nation “Great Again” is to eliminate their very existence.

BUT I’M REALISTIC enough to know that such erasure from our society isn’t going to happen – and that the real advancement for the better is accepting the cultural differences that add a sense of variety to our masses.

Besides, the idea that the poem that inspired the tune was meant to be a part of the program of a Lincoln tribute is something that ought to motivate those of us in the “Land of Lincoln” to take the tune seriously.

It is a pleasant-enough melody that no one ought to be thinking of as an example of political subversion.

That is, unless you’re of the type who seriously venerates the memory of Jefferson Davis. In which case, you really do have some issues to confront about life.

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Is anyone really shocked the jail inmates cheered for the cop killer?

I really have a hard time believing that Cook County sheriff’s police officials could be shocked that jail inmates awaiting their day in court on Thursday would cheer for the guy who’s facing criminal charges for the shooting death earlier this week of Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer.

Defendant? Or anti-hero?

If anything, I’d be shocked to learn they had been respectful of their jailers, or the legal system that I’m sure many of them believe is railroading them into a few years’ residence within the state prison system.

NEWS ACCOUNTS FROM both of the major metro newspapers (Sun-Times, Tribune) indicate the sheriff, who runs the county jail and criminal courts complex, wants to identify the disrespectful inmates.

With their names to be turned over to the assistant state’s attorneys who are prosecuting their pending criminal cases. Their hope is that someday, those disrespectful inmates will have extra time added to their punishments because of their behavior this week.

While several of the inmates awaiting trial in Cook County may wind up finding themselves transferred to county jails elsewhere. They may wind up awaiting trial in some rural county jail where their legal proceedings will be far more complicated to carry out.

But a little bit of inconvenience is being deemed as warranted for acting as though Shomari Legghette were some sort of hero because of the half-dozen gunshots he fired when Bauer tried to catch him Wednesday at the Thompson Center state government building.

THE NEWSPAPERS ARE going along with this tone – the county sheriff provided video taken of a holding cell so we can see, and hear, crude images of the cheering inmates as Legghette is brought past their cell en route to the courtroom – where a judge decided that Legghette should await trial inside the jail without the option of bond.

Now I’m not saying I think these inmates were anything but buffoons in the way they behaved, or that Bauer (who will get the full-ritual police funeral on Saturday) is deserving of disrespect.

It’s just that I wouldn’t expect anything but tacky behavior from jail inmates.

No matter what legal basis there is for saying these men (including Legghette) are innocent until proven guilty, the fact is that many of them are misfits from the standard beliefs of our society.

WHICH IS WHAT led most of them to actions that would bring them under suspicion by police and prosecutors and cause them to have criminal charges pending against them.

Besides, there’s something about incarceration that would break the spirit of just about anybody – surround yourself with enough misfits, and you’ll find yourself starting to take on their ideals.

I remember one time I was inside the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet (as a reporter-type person). As the group I was with was passing the roundhouses, we could hear the inmates taunting us – letting us know they regarded us as being as much a part of the problem as anybody else.

It was execution duty (back in the days when Illinois still committed homicide in the name of justice), and the inmates let me and others know we would “burn in Hell” as much as anyone else for being a part of the ritual.

I ALSO RECALL crude and vulgar threats shouted specifically at the prison staffers – letting them know how they would be “f---ed up” by the inmates if they ever wound up inside the prison proper.

With that kind of mentality, it wouldn’t shock me in the least to learn that some of the county jail inmates (some of whom are bound to wind up in the Illinois Corrections Department eventually) would think cheers and applause would be worthy of a man charged with the shooting death of a cop.

Could he be Cook County sheriff?

So to learn that aides to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart are saying the inmate behavior is “disgraceful and despicable, just beyond the pale” has a familiar ring to it.

Something similar to that of Capt. Renault from “Casablanca,” when he uttered his now-memorable line about being “shocked, shocked to learn that gambling is taking place on the premises” of Rick’s Café. Both of them are worthy of an equally insincere sigh.

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EXTRA: King no more, but record lives

B.B. King isn’t amongst us any longer. He died late Thursday at age 89 at his home, and his daughter who lives near Chicago expressed dismay that she was unable to see him one last time before his passing.

Although for many of us, King is a voice on a record. Or perhaps on an old “Sanford and Son” episode where we’re told that Redd Foxx’s “Fred Sanford” character stole a woman away from the bluesman – although the woman turned out to be LaWanda Page’s “Aunt Esther” character.

A THOUGHT THAT once again nearly caused the Watts neighborhood junk dealer to have “the big one.”

B.B.'s dream woman?

For me, King’s passing reminded me of one of my favorite record albums – the reknowned “B.B. King at Cook County Jail.” A live recording of his 1970 concert at the jail located south of the Criminal Courts building at 26^th and California.

Some people like to go on about Johnny Cash’s live concert recording at San Quentin prison in California. But the King recording just has such a freshness that makes it perpetually listenable. And not just because Rolling Stone ranked it as one of the 500 best rock ‘n’ roll albums of all time (although I’d dispute the “No. 499” ranking as a bit low).

I always crack up in laughter at the sound of all those inmates booing and heckling all those decades ago at the thought of “our own beloved Sheriff (Joseph) Woods” and “another dear friend, chief Justice of the Criminal Courts Joseph Palmer.”

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EXTRA: Jail not a pleasant place. That doesn’t make lawsuit’s claims proper

I find it odd that a television in the background while I write this is showing the 1997 film “Pleasantville,” which tells the tale of a 1950’s-era community where everything is pristine and pleasant.


Just because Cook County had a miserable jail back in 1910 doesn't mean we have to strive today to be even worse


Of course, that film shows us the dirty underside of such a white-washed community. And a lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court shows us the dirty underside of Chicago these days.

AS IN THE Cook County Jail.

The lawsuit says that the county’s management of the jail amounts to “sadistic violence and brutality.” What with the way guards use physical force to maintain order, or turn their heads to look away from brutal acts committed by inmates on themselves.

Now I know the reality I have heard from corrections officials that they are outnumbered by inmates within a jail or prison facility, and how any attempt to impose order by total domination would likely provoke the inmates into a riot.

So they tend to let the inmates have a sense of policing themselves.

THIS LAWSUIT BY the MacArthur Justice Center and the Uptown People’s Law Center gives a horrific image of incarceration that ought to make us ashamed that we could permit such a thing to happen within our society.

Although I’m also sure there are those amongst us who will read the reports about the lawsuit and merely shrug their shoulders, thinking to themselves, “Prison isn’t supposed to be pleasant.”

I’ll agree. But I also tend to believe that how we treat our most vulnerable (or choose to ignore them) also says a lot about us as a society and how seriously we deserve to be treated.

Personally, I’d like to think we deserve better than any reputation we’d get from letting the violence run amok out there at the jail in the Little Village neighborhood.

EVEN IN PLEASANTVILLE, in that scene where Toby McGuire’s “Bud” character spent time in a jail cell (charged with actions that made life “less pleasant”), nobody was threatening him with “an elevator ride.”

As in a place where he could be beaten up without being recorded on any security cameras – according to the jailhouse code included in the lawsuit.

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Rooting, for once, for the inmates

This might be the one time that the ideologues of our society who like to rant and rage about us being “soft on crime” might have been rooting for the inmates at the Cook County Jail.



Beats finding a 'shiv' in a cell

Then again, maybe they think chess is too soft an activity – and they’ll still rage!

I WAS AMUSED by the Chicago Sun-Times report about how inmates at the county jail this week played inmates held in prisons across Russia. It wasn’t face-to-face. Our inmates were in the jail’s law library, while the Russian inmates were in their own prison facilities. The games were played on-line.



Not the typical chess championship setting

And it seems that the criminal element of Russian society is just as masterful at chess as their international champions – as they beat the bulk of the Cook County inmates. One inmate went so far as to tell the Sun-Times that the games felt, “like an ambush.”

Personally, I find the idea of inmates spending all their spare time (which is what they have while being incarcerated) playing a board game to be encouraging. There are worse things they could be doing.

Although I couldn’t help but notice some people using the anonymity of the Internet to complain that these inmates should have been doing something that resembles hard labor.

THEY PROBABLY WOULD only be pleased to see inmates wearing black-and-white striped uniforms and swinging big hammers. Personally, I’d be concerned that they’d use those hammers as weapons against their guards.

As Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told the Sun-Times, chess is harmless because they can’t really, “beat someone with a rook.”

And as for those who wonder about the whuppin’ the Cook County inmates received this week, there’s one encouraging factor. They have nothing but time to continue to practice and get better – should there ever be anything resembling a rematch.

What else was notable amongst the activity taking place Thursday on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan?

SOME SENSE PREVAILS?: It has been a month since the Cook County courts imposed their new ban on people being able to bring their cellular telephones into the courthouses, and a part of me is relieved to see that some semblance of sense prevails in terms of that policy’s enforcement.



Deputies showing some sense in phone enforcement

My duties as a reporter-type person took me Thursday to the courthouse in suburban Markham, where deputies were allowing people to keep their phones on their persons inside the building.

They were requiring anyone wishing to make a call to go outside to do so. But the idea of people with business before the court having to surrender the phones wasn’t quite so rigid as the “letter of the law” implies.

Although within the courtrooms, judges were saying that anybody whose phones rang during session would have them confiscated. And I did see one individual try to use his phone during court. Deputies confiscated it from him, but returned it when he left for the day.

THE YOUTH VOTE?: It’s now in the hands of Gov. Pat Quinn as to whether 17-year-olds will be able to cast ballots in elections in Illinois.



Not the favorite setting for youth

The state Senate this week gave the final legislative approval required for a bill that allows 17-year-olds to vote in primaries – IF they can document that they will be 18 by the time the general election comes around.

Yes, I’m aware there are a few youthful types already on their way toward becoming government geeks who will be all worked up about the chance to cast their first ballot a few months earlier than the law currently allows.

But those officials who say they support this as a way of bolstering the percentage of those who vote? It sounds like wishful thinking to my mindset, since the rule of thumb for political professionals trying to turn out the vote is that it is the old folks, so to speak, who are the most reliable when it comes to showing up at the polling place.

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‘Confused politician’ truly redundant. Or, does 'slammer’ serve good beef?

“This isn’t a double-negative?”

GORMAN: Making sure she doesn't vote wrong

That bit of skepticism and concern came from the lips of Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth Doody Gorman, R-Orland Park, when she and her colleagues were voting on a measure Tuesday that had instigated hours of debate at a previous meeting.

GORMAN WAS CONCERNED she was about to vote the “wrong” way on something because maybe the issue was worded in a way that she’d have to vote “no” to support something.

In fact, she wasn’t the only person confused. It took nearly 15 minutes to take a roll-call vote of 16 individuals (county Commissioner Earlean Collins, D-Chicago, was absent) because everybody was clueless about what was happening at that moment.

Commissioner William Beavers, D-Chicago, engaged in a back-and-forth repartee with the board secretary to ensure that his “yes” vote really was an affirmative one that meant exactly what he intended it to mean.

I would say it was amusing to watch. But the fact that it was our tax dollars at work made it most-definitely a chore.

WHAT WAS AT stake was the food service contract for Cook County Jail (yes, if we incarcerate people, we have to feed them).

Aramark, based in Philadelphia, had the contract.

But the county is now going to transfer over to Sioux Falls, S.D.-based CBM Managed Services, which has a division that specializes in food service at correctional facilities across the country.

It seems that one of the potential perks is that CBM is capable of offering the inmates a culinary treat – if they’re willing to pay for it themselves.

ONCE THE TRANSITION is made and things are up and running, inmates being held at the county jail will get one night a week where they can have an Italian beef sandwich for their dinner (a Buona Beef brand sandwich, I’m told).

Before you start getting all worked up about inmates being coddled, keep in mind that the only ones who will get such a sandwich will be those who have enough money in their jail inmate accounts to cover the cost.

But I can envision the rants and rages of the alleged “law and order” types, and perhaps that fear of instigating these people is what caused the county board members to be overly cautious about casting their votes.

Because this is exactly the kind of issue that gets distorted into a nasty attack ad or the subject material for a campaign mailing by some future opponent who figures real people don’t have time to figure out the “truth” behind the attack.

THEN AGAIN, THIS probably was the ultimate example of “fear and ignorance” combined in our government officials. It definitely wasn’t a pretty sight.

In the end, the measure got a 13-1 vote, with county Commissioner Joan Patricia Murphy, D-Crestwood, being the lone “no” vote. Two other commissioners cast “present” votes – which probably means they couldn’t figure out at all what they should do when they were finally confronted with the roll call.

And soon, the inmates of our county jail will have a food option that might make their incarceration while awaiting trial (or serving a short sentence for a minor offense) just slightly more bearable.

Not that I would want to be held as an inmate for any length of time. Getting a sandwich stuffed with something other than bologna just doesn’t seem worth it.

AYKROYD (as Blues): Not a fan of the oatmeal



EVEN IF THE Cook County Jail develops a reputation for serving a quality beef sandwich!

I suspect that for most of us, all we’re going to know about the food at the jail is what we learned from The Blues Brothers film – namely that the oatmeal is lousy.

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Praise for Preckwinkle? Why not!

It’s not everyday that I feel compelled to offer up some praise for a political official.

PRECKWINKLE: A pat on the back



Usually, whenever one of them does the proper thing, it is more by default. They get shamed into it, rather than any sense of benefitting the public good.

BECAUSE SELF-PRESERVATION IS usually the top priority of elected officials – which I understand. You can’t do anything positive if you’re not in office to begin with.

So it is with a sense of shock and surprise that I must admit to thinking a little more highly of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle now than I did, say, 24 hours earlier.

What caught my attention was the fact that Preckwinkle felt compelled to hold a press conference on Thursday to address an issue that I would have bet any amount of money she would have kept quiet about.

The issue is the new county policy by which Cook County Jail officials do not feel compelled to place a call to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement every time they get an inmate whose immigration status is questionable.

MANY COUNTIES DO just that. And the end result is a bureaucratic mess that we all ought to be ashamed of, but of which only Cook County seems to.

What happens in those other places is that those inmates often get a “hold” put on them, which means they can be kept in the county jail after they post bond. Or in some cases, even after they manage to resolve the charges that they were facing that caused them to be held in the county jail to begin with.

We can literally have people found “not guilty” of an offense who still get incarcerated because of the bureaucratic bloat that is our national immigration policy.

That caused Preckwinkle and the county board last year to say “no more.” Which is now being used against them by the conservative ideologues who are taking up the case of a Mexican citizen who was briefly held at the Cook County jail on charges that he was driving drunk and caused an auto crash that killed a man.

A JUDGE SET his bond at $250,000 for the charges, and his family managed to come up with the 10 percent required to get him out of jail while the charges are pending.

But what has some people all upset is the fact that the man has since disappeared, and there is evidence that he fled the country. He’s back in Mexico.

Which has the ideologues claiming that he’d still be incarcerated if “Immigration” had been allowed to put a hold on him like they do with people in other counties who face the possibility of deportation.

Preckwinkle on Thursday said there will be a study this year on how bail is set in the county courts, and that there might need to be an improvement in the amount of information that judges are given about cases when they set bond.

BUT SHE’S NOT giving in to the ideological rhetoric that claims the county screwed up by implementing its policy – which basically says it won’t cooperate with a flawed federal policy.

“This type of fear-mongering is distasteful, and has no place in the public policy arena,” Preckwinkle told reporter-types at her press conference, adding that the true problem here is that perhaps the bond should have been set higher – or maybe denied altogether.

Which, to me, sounds so incredibly logical. But with the ideologues screaming for her head, I would have thought for sure she’d keep quiet and hope the issue would eventually fade away.

Instead, she’s taking this issue head-on, and refusing to be intimidated by rancid rhetoric.

WHICH IS WHY I’ll give her a pat on the back for now, along with this bit of praise. It is nice to see a political person with a backbone, and I will think more highly of her for it.

At least until her next gaffe. Because invariably, every politician commits a real screw-up at some point in their electoral lives.

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Being cautious? Or careless?

There are times when I’m not sure whether to think that our government officials are being cautious and protective of the tax dollars they’re spending – or if their unwillingness to rush into something is just evidence that they don’t have a clue as to what they’re talking about.

That was definitely the impression I gained Tuesday from watching the Cook County Board in action.

THE ISSUE OF the moment was approving an item that would have allowed the county to seek bids for, “the purchase of uniforms and clothing for various county departments.”

When I first read that on an agenda, my gut reaction was to wonder, “What departments?!?”

So it was with a jolt of excitement that I heard county board member Deborah Sims start off debate on this issue by asking the very blunt, and straightforward, question.

“What departments are we talking about?”

GEE. A GOVERNMENT official wanting to have a clue as to what is going on. In fact, a government official refusing to just cast a knee-jerk vote in favor of something – even though it really was just a procedural step in the whole purchasing process.

But before you start using e-mail to send me all your horror stories about Sims and her past government actions, this commentary isn’t about to become a piece praising the county board member from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs.

In fact, it’s not a piece that will make anyone happy – except for maybe the malcontents who like to complain about government and get their joy from watching our public officials screw things up.

I don’t, because I realize it ultimately harms our interests and reflects badly upon us. After all, we voted for Sims and all the other members of the Cook County Board. Her gaffes are our gaffes.

WHAT ENSUED IN response to Sims’ question was a back-and-forth in which the bureaucrats who handle government purchases for the county government tried to avoid giving a direct answer.

“Various departments” was the initial response. Upon some pushing by Sims, one such department was identified as the sheriff’s police.

Which led to some confusion since the sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement personnel are required to purchase their own uniforms – with eventual reimbursement for their expenses, provided they don’t get carried away with their sartorial demands.

After much more squabbling, it eventually came out that what was being considered here were those deliberately-hideous jump suits that inmates at the Cook County Jail and other facilities are required to wear so that they stand out in a crowd of people.

WHAT THIS IS about is seeking bids from companies to sell the county the khaki clothing that inmates must wear.

But county purchasing agent Maria de Lourdes Coss said, “we do not want to limit it,” because there’s also the chance that they may include bids for uniforms worn by the civilian personnel who work for the sheriff – such as the janitorial staff.

It was a lot of squabbling over what should have been a very straightforward issue. We do, after all, have to clothe those inmates while they are in the custody of the county. It’s one of those dreaded, but very necessary, expenses.

And Sims was legitimate in her indignation upon finally being given a straight answer, saying of the written description provided to county officials, “this doesn’t tell us anything,” adding later, “you’re not telling us who these departments are.”

AGREEING WITH HER was county board member Robert Steele, who said, “we want to be quite aware of what we’re voting on.”

In fact, Sims at one point tried to postpone a vote on this measure (which is just about seeking the bids, it’s not about actually awarding a contract) until a future meeting.

Yet that is where Sims goes from being the good-government aggressive-type to being the official who probably didn’t have a clue what she was being told.

Because when she was finally given the explanation, she ultimately voted for the measure to seek bids – even though she admits she’s still upset about the lack of details provided.

“I THINK THEY should give us a better explanation, but this will suffice for today,” she said in backing the measure. Was this just a backing-down to cover up her confusion? It sure seems that way.

So in the end, the routine measure got a routine vote of support – everybody said “aye.” If anybody opposed this measure – which seeks bids for a one-year contract to sell the county inmate uniforms, with three one-year renewal options – they kept it to themselves.

Which in the end means this was county business, as usual.

That may be the real key to comprehending the way government at any level operates. Something does not have to be illegal in order to be bad. Sometimes, it’s the most innocuous moments that are the most cheesy in character.

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Cook County Board makes immigration statement they’ve already made

The Cook County Board this week is likely to take an action that I’m sure the conservative ideologues of our society will lambast as a federal offense, if not treasonous and downright “un-American.”

GARCIA: Making national news?

Actually, it’s more a symbolic gesture. But leave it to the overly partisan among us to exaggerate the significance of something.

THE ISSUE AT stake here is immigration reform. And for what it’s worth, the county board back in 2010 approved a resolution stating that it officially supports the concept of comprehensive reform of the nation’s immigration laws, and also has passed vague measures saying the county wouldn’t do business with Arizona companies because of that state’s hostile laws on this particular issue.

The action likely to be taken when the county board meets on Wednesday merely reinforces the fact that the Democrat-led government body supports the idea that treating people from other countries whose papers aren’t in line as vicious criminals is just absurd.

So I personally don’t think this gesture is really worth much attention, although the reports being disseminated in anticipation of the county board’s likely vote would have you think that Cook County is “taking center stage” in the ongoing debate over immigration reform.

The measure in question is being sponsored by county Commissioner Jesus Garcia (one of two Latino members of the 17-member county board), and it says that the county sheriff should refuse to hold people in the Cook County Jail just because federal immigration officials have issued a “detainer.”

WHAT HAPPENS IS that if someone gets arrested in the county and there becomes reason to suspect that their immigration status is suspicious, a federal detainer is issued.

That detainer means that the person gets held at the county jail even if they are capable of posting bond for their charge – or even if their charge gets dismissed or otherwise resolved.

It means that county jail officials get roped into the business of holding onto immigration cases until the officials with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency are able to get around to resolving those cases.

In some cases, the county incarceration for people who have no pending criminal charge against them is significant.

CONSIDERING THAT IT’S only the ideologues who want to view these people as criminals, it puts the county into having to take up the “wrong side” of the debate on this particular issue.

Garcia’s resolution does include a clause saying that the county jail should only hold these immigration cases if the U.S. government provides the county with a written agreement by which it will reimburse Cook County for all costs of incarceration.

Immigration officials have said they have no intention of reimbursing Cook County because they don’t reimburse any local jurisdiction for the costs caused by immigration detainers. I’m sure they want to view this issue as a courtesy extended by one law enforcement agency to another, and that Cook County officials are off on some sort of diatribe.

What it really is about is making sure people understand that the government officials in Chicago are sympathetic to the people who live here, particularly since it is a city where even the so-called white people are strongly aware of their ethnic origins.

MEANING THAT THE county board’s opposition to being involved in this issue has nothing to do with money. I suspect that even if the federal government were to offer to “pay up” for incarceration costs, the officials who vote against this idea when it comes up this week would still be opposed to the general concept.

As for those who are going to say that this issue is going to cause a lengthy court battle, you’d already be correct.

For the National Immigrant Justice Center already has filed a lawsuit that claims detainers are an un-Constitutional concept. It is pending in the U.S. District Court for Chicago and northern Illinois, and is based on the idea that someone who does not have a pending local criminal charge against them should not be held in a local jail.

Consider it the equivalent of the county telling the federal government, “Do your own dirty work” when it comes to detaining people and holding them while their status is resolved.

PERHAPS IF FEDERAL ICE officials had to be responsible for full incarceration for everybody they take an interest in, then they’d seriously try to find only those people without papers who pose a serious threat to our society – instead of engaging in mass raids that try to pick up as many people as possible (almost like a ballplayer trying to boost his batting average at the end of the season to try to get a contractual bonus).

I have a hard time getting that excited about this particular action because, like I wrote earlier, this is more of a symbolic gesture. This particular measure already has nine sponsors, including the county board president herself.

There will probably be heated debate, and at least a couple of angry suburban types on the county board who decide to vote against this measure just to be ornery.

But anyone who thinks that Toni Preckwinkle and the county board majority is significantly changing its thought process by approving this measure is seriously missing the point.

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Preckwinkle’s opposition to jail clogged by petty drug arrests is nothing new

PRECKWINKLE: No more cheap arrests

Anybody who is shocked and outraged that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle thinks many of the people who currently clog the county jail because of petty drug arrests hasn’t been paying attention.

Her relevation earlier this week that she has asked police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to have the Police Department reduce the amount of arrests it does for marijuana possession is so in line with her general rhetoric when it comes to crime and incarceration. It’s not surprising.

THOSE WHO WANT to claim outrage should consider that such a sentiment says more about you than it does about Preckwinkle.

Perhaps it is because I have handled reporter-type assignments where I have heard Preckwinkle talk about the conditions at Cook County Jail, which she thinks are miserable because the place is so overcrowded with people who really have no need to be kept locked away from the bulk of society.

The crowded conditions create an environment where those inmates who really do need to be locked up while their criminal cases are pending become harder to keep an eye on.

The end result is hazardous conditions for all.

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I heard Preckwinkle speak to school children in suburban South Holland. It may have been a Catholic school, but the gathering was almost entirely of African-American youths with an occasional Latino kid in the mix.

She told those kids of the statistics indicating the heavy racial minority composition of the jail population and how the current system means that those minority kids will have to behave extra careful in order to ensure that they don’t someday wind up in jail.

“That’s why it is particularly important for you to behave,” Preckwinkle said back in April. “Jail is not a place where you want yourself, or any of your friends, to be.”

But the reason it becomes so miserable, she has always said, is because of the large number of people who ought to be receiving something resembling treatment for their drug problems – rather than being locked away for drug possession.

THOSE ARRESTS FOR small amounts could even wind up becoming more serious drug problems while in jail, just because some people can only cope with the sordid conditions at 26^th Street and California Avenue by using substances that numb their senses.

In light of the fact that she has expressed these views (which weren’t even terribly new when I heard them this spring) before, the idea that she’s now using her new government post (she hasn’t even been county board president for a full year yet) to try to influence people in positions of law enforcement authority merely seems like a logical act.

Which is why there are now reports all over Chicago and the Associated Press newswire is spreading the word across the nation about the Cook County politico who doesn’t want people arrested for drug possession.

“It’s pretty well-known within the criminal justice system that the judges will dismiss those charges for very modest amounts of illicit drugs,” Preckwinkle said earlier this week to reporter-types. “I suggested to (McCarthy) that the police might stop arresting people for this, since it clogs up our jail and their cases will be dismissed out anyway.”

AS ONE WHO has sat through many court proceedings throughout the years, I have seen the truth of this statement. The people who got picked up because a police officer discovered enough marijuana for a cigarette or two will get their cases dismissed – provided there aren’t some other factors (such as trying to get physically abusive with the cop) that come into play.

In fact, some suburbs already have decriminalized such small amounts of the drug to the point where someone who gets caught merely makes an appearance in municipal court to pay a fine for violating a local ordinance.

And one gets the strong impression that those municipalities are more interested in collecting the fines to bolster their local revenues than they are in putting up any image of protecting the morals of their communities.

Now I know some people find this kind of attitude offensive.

THEY WANT TO believe that pursuing even the smallest amounts of drug usage is making a bold stand for morals and decency, and that easing up in any sense is taking the “radical” step toward legalization of such drugs.

Which is over-bloated rhetorical nonsense.

Personally, I have no problem regarding someone who abuses drugs to the point where it takes over their lives in the same way I view an alcoholic. They need help. Perhaps the day will come when we see our various attempts at staging a “War on Drugs” as a failure just as much as the alcohol Prohibition of the 1920s.

If we are to move in that direction, we’re going to need more political people like Preckwinkle who are willing to view the issue in ways other than those meant to pander to the ideologues of our society – who themselves could probably care less about those using drugs, except to the degree that it gives them someone to rant and rage against.

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