During the 2022 campaign, Bailey made the exaggerated but memorable claim Chicago was “living The Purge when criminals ravage at will and the cops are told to stand down.”
Bailey was alluding to The Purge movie franchise, where one day a year, people can commit crimes without facing punishment.
The Loch Ness Monster
Not
true, Pritzker answered back. The SAFE-T Act was written to protect a
mother. A mythical mother, the Loch Ness Monster of petty criminals.
The governor, many times during the campaign, repeated this lie.
“Making
sure that we’re also addressing the problem of a single mother who
shoplifted diapers for her baby, who is put in jail and kept there for
six months because she doesn’t have a couple of hundred dollars to pay
for bail.”
Yes, I said Loch Ness Monster,
because such a woman — sorry “Nessie” believers — never existed, except
in Pritzker's imagination.
Eventually, Pritzker added baby formula to the mother’s “the heist.”
In
response, Patrick Kenneally, who was then the McHenry County state’s
attorney, and 100 other Illinois county prosecutors — out of 102 —
opposed the SAFE-T Act, and in a lawsuit called the law a “clear and
present threat to public safety.” And Kenneally said that under Illinois
law prior to the SAFE-T Act it was impossible for Loch Ness Mother to be jailed pretrial for simply stealing diapers, calling Pritzker’s claim “misinformation appealing to emotion.”
And amid that discussion, Pritzker launched another lie.
"Well,
let’s just set the record straight with everybody. The SAFE-T Act is
designed to keep murderers and domestic abusers, violent criminals in
jail.”
Yet Talley, despite being a
seven-time felon who was accused of violence, a parole absconder, and
someone who stopped charging his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet,
was not locked in a jail cell on the morning he allegedly murdered
Bartholomew.
