Will Toomin be big enough judge to settle legal tiff tied to Jussie Smollett?

The aftermath of the criminal case once pending against actor Jussie Smollett almost seems like it is devolving into a version of the old playground game “Keep Away” – only it seems nobody wants to be deemed “it” and have to ultimately issue a ruling on the case’s legal merits.

MARTIN: Looking to avoid conflict

For Judge LeRoy Martin, Jr. (the son of one-time Chicago Police Superintendent LeRoy Martin) decided on Friday he wants another judge to have to decide on whether the case ultimately has to be resolved by a special prosecutor.

LEGAL OFFICIALS WHO are pushing for a special prosecutor are upset that the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office ultimately decided to drop the criminal charges against Smollett – who allegedly had hired a pair of men to stage a racially-motivated attack against him.

Those legal minds want to believe it is now the state’s attorney’s office that may have acted improperly, and may wind up being found to have engaged in some sort of illicit activity.

Or maybe not!

Perhaps it is that no judge wants to be put in a position where they could wind up having to preside over legal proceedings regarding their “Officer of the Court” colleagues?

ANYWAY, IT IS what led to the decision by Martin to back away from the case. For what it’s worth, the legal minds wanted Martin out because they note his own son, LeRoy III, is an assistant state’s attorney for Cook County.

TOOMIN: May have to resolve Smollett affair

Meaning it might wind up being even more of a conflict for Martin, the presiding judge over the Cook County court Criminal division, to ultimately have to issue an opinion on this matter.

Although the Chicago Sun-Times reported he doesn’t think it’s automatically a conflict. As he says, “the idea that a judge should recuse because they have a close family member working in the office, (the system) would literally grind to a halt.”

But he went ahead and recused himself anyway, saying he didn’t want the appearance of a conflict of interest to linger – which would wind up making this case even more of a legal scandal than it already is regarded as.

MARTIN MAY WELL have made one sensible decision with regards to the Smollett case – which is going to gain national attention regardless of how it turns out. That’s what happens when an actor gets busted in a way that he’s probably now best known for his arrest – rather than his acting ability.

FORT: Smollett case petty compared to Jeff

Martin says he wants Judge Michael Toomin to take over the case and ultimately make the decision as to whether a special prosecutor needs to be brought in to investigate the Cook County prosecutors who ultimately decided that Smollett didn’t do anything illegal.

No matter how fake or phony the police insist the whole affair was.

This case is going to become a nationally-known mess. Yet Toomin may well be the one judge in Cook County whose record is filled with so many “big” cases that this one will wind up being regarded as petty nonsense by comparison.

TOOMIN, WHO IS 81, is the judge who allowed a special prosecutor to ultimately handle the criminal case against R.J. Vanecko, the grandson and nephew of former Chicago mayors Richard J. and Richard M., who eventually had to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and wound up getting some jail time.

He’s also the judge who handed down a lengthy prison sentence for murder to Jeff Fort, the leader of the one-time South Side street gang El Rukn, who remains incarcerated on even harsher charges at a federal facility in Florence, Colo.

Then there was the case against Harry Aleman, who killed people for organized crime in Chicago and literally tried to bribe legal officials to get around a criminal conviction. With Toomin ultimately presiding over the trial that resulted in Aleman dying in prison.

SMOLLETT: Once a Mighty Duck

Just a few of the many cases Toomin has handled during nearly four decades as a criminal judge, and which could make him unintimidated at the notion of handling a case involving an actor best known for playing a musician on “Empire,” along with one of the kiddie hockey players from the old “The Mighty Ducks” (remember Emilio Estevez?) films.

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Police replacement a political perk of winning, holding elective office

It’s one of the perks of being elected mayor of any community – you get the power to have your very own uniformed, professional law enforcement type as your police chief, and that chief is totally susceptible to your whims.

JOHNSON: Politics puts job on the line

Whoever wins the office of mayor of Chicago come the Feb. 26 election (and likely April 2 runoff) is going to have the fate of Eddie Johnson in his/her hands. In all likelihood, the police superintendent of Chicago is likely to be unemployed shortly after the May inauguration.

IT’S JUST THE way it is. Being a police chief isn’t a lifelong appointment. It is a job you hold so long as the mayor is approving of you.

So when Toni Preckwinkle comes right out and says she’s going to replace Johnson if/when she becomes mayor, a part of me wants to credit her for being incredibly honest.

Not that I necessarily approve of the reason she has for wanting Johnson out on his keister. But at least she’s not trying to engage in some political rhetoric or high-minded doubletalk about her intentions.

These thoughts came to my mind Monday night while watching one of Preckwinkle’s many mayoral opponents on the WTTW-TV program, "Chicago Tonight." Susana Mendoza had the question put to her directly – would she be intent on picking a new police chief? And who, pray tell, could it be?

PRECKWINKLE: Wants points for firing chief

MENDOZA TRIED TO make it seem as though it is to her credit that she wouldn’t answer – offering up a high-minded rhetorical rambling about how it’s premature to be engaging in such talk about replacing public officials since she’s not actually elected mayor yet.

That sounds nice. In a certain goo-goo mentality way of thinking, it might be admirable.

Yet it also strikes me as being a load of, how shall I say it, horse hockey!

The simple fact is that a police chief post of any type is – by definition – one in which the person serves at the will of the elected official. Invariably, a new mayor brings in a new person to run the police department for them – in ways that are befitting the persona of the new mayor.

MENDOZA: Wants points for not saying

IN FACT, ONE of the few police superintendents in Chicago I’ve ever heard of who didn’t immediately get replaced upon the election of a new mayor was that of LeRoy Martin – who gained the post from Harold Washington and remained in charge of the police even after Richard M. Daley was elected in 1989.

Of course, Daley the younger wound up serving more than two decades as mayor and wound up going through his share of police superintendents after Martin retired in 1992.

The point being that it’s pretty much a sure thing that Eddie Johnson’s time as superintendent – which dates back to 2016 – will end some time next year. The new mayor is going to view having a police chief who owes their presence in the job to her/him as one of the perks of the job!

Particularly if Garry McCarthy winds up somehow winning the mayoral election. Being a former police “chief” in both Chicago (where Mayor Rahm Emanuel fired him in a move he wrongly hoped would make the “stink” over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald fizzle away) and Newark, N.J., I’m sure he’ll have strong thoughts about how his superintendent should behave – and will expect his new “top cop” to follow instructions from City Hall very closely.

AS FOR PRECKWINKLE, she’s admitting she wants to replace Johnson because she says she thinks he is a significant part of the problem in terms of the distrust a portion of the population has for the police department in Chicago.

McCARTHY: Cop turned mayor? Maybe!

“He refused to acknowledge that there was a code of silence in the police department,” Preckwinkle told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I don’t think that’s an honest statement.”

Of course, there are those who think this attitude is more evidence of Preckwinkle behaving like a political “boss,” which is exactly what they’d really like to see removed from municipal government.

Some people may even vote against Preckwinkle for this very attitude. Although if we want to be honest, Johnson’s 30-year career with the Chicago Police is likely to end in retirement – regardless of who prevails on Election Day.

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Will a new police superintendent really change law enforcement mindset?

As someone who actually managed to cast a ballot to keep Anita Alvarez as Cook County state’s attorney, I wonder what it would really take to change the mindset of people working within law enforcement.

FOXX: Can she single-handedly change?

A good part of the reason why I didn’t jump on the Kim Foxx bandwagon was because I thought people were being absurd if they thought that Foxx could single-handedly “clean up” the attitude amongst some police in viewing black people as the natural subject for their harassment.

SO AS FAR as those people who earlier this week were chanting, “Two down, one to go” (referring to Alvarez and former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, with Mayor Rahm Emanuel still their target), I think they’re dealing a little over-simplistically with this issue.

I comprehend the anger some feel about the shooting death back in 2014 of teenager Laquan McDonald (the one most of us didn’t learn of until late in 2015, and might not know about at all if not for THAT video recording). But I think we’re making a mistake if we think that it was individuals involved in creating the current law enforcement mindset in Chicago.

It’s not even unique to Chicago. It truly is a mindset I have found within many law enforcement types, regardless of which city they claim to “serve and protect” (or “serve and oppress,” according to the old joke). I still remember one police chief (not in Chicago) telling me how law enforcement attracts the kind of people who are our society's true elite in the way they view the world.

So long as the police in Chicago don’t experience a change, new State’s Attorney Foxx isn’t going to give us any significantly-different results.

KIRKPATRICK: Could be next police supt.

IT IS WITH all that in mind that I viewed Thursday’s announcement by the Chicago Police Department that they have narrowed down to three the number of people in line for the superintendent’s post.

Some think the significant factor is that interim Supt. John Escalante is NOT among the finalists – although I never really figured he would be. There are those activist types who are clamoring for a black person to be picked as the new head of the Chicago police.

Sure enough, two of the three finalists are black men. Which makes me wonder what happens if it’s the third person – a white woman who once was the head of police in Spokane, Wash. – who gets the job.

MARTIN: Old-school cops approved

Would there be a public outcry, and not just because a woman was put in charge of a so-called “man’s job!”

I DON’T KNOW anything about Anne Kirkpatrick or her qualifications, so I’m not criticizing her or endorsing her for the post. Although I do think it would take an outsider of a significantly different mindset to give our city’s police department the kind of jolt it needs.

Whether Kirkpatrick has that kind of “juice” is something we’d have to see. All I know is that just picking a black person for the post won’t change the mentality of the department.

Many black police officers I have encountered can be just as gung-ho and oppressive toward the masses as any other law enforcement official.

Heck, I still remember one-time police Superintendent LeRoy Martin, who got himself into verbal trouble for admiring the oppressive tactics of police in China, and made comments suggesting that the U.S. Constitution gave too much in the way of protection to the rights of criminal suspects.

NOT EXACTLY THE kind of talk the activist types would want to hear.

EMANUEL: Detracting attention from self?

Now I’m not saying that all black police officers think like LeRoy (who wasn’t even the first African-American to rise to the rank of police superintendent in Chicago; that was Fred Rice back in 1983, appointed by then-Mayor Harold Washington). It’s just that we need to think beyond the knee-jerk reactions some people will want to have with regards to the police.

The possible ramifications of who winds up getting this position will reverberate for years to come – certainly longer than the three more years that Emanuel has on his mayoral term.

Because in the end, it is the people who are in charge of the department who will determine the direction our law enforcement officers are headed – not anybody we manage to fire or dump on Election Day!

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