Rematch in Dem primary for Cook sheriff

The race for Cook County sheriff pits an incumbent reformer against a retired veteran officer in a rematch from four years ago.

Sheriff Tom Dart had little formal background in law enforcement when he was elected in 2006. He'd been an assistant state's attorney and served in the General Assembly before becoming chief of staff to Sheriff Michael Sheahan, and when Sheahan decided to call it quits Dart stepped up and ran to replace him. Retired sheriff's police Sgt. Sylvester Baker was among those he defeated, but Baker is back to challenge him anew in the Democratic primary on Feb. 2. Both are Chicago residents.

With a legal rather than law enforcement background, Dart said he was more than willing to make needed changes. "The thing I thrive on, the thing that has been so helpful for us, is bringing outsiders in," he said. "Being an outsider, there are things that just jump out at you. 'This makes no sense.' There is nothing I can see that's set in stone here. We can and will change anything."

Although a drop in crime and arrests has helped, Dart has eased overcrowding and other conditions at Cook County jail to the point where he believes they can finally get out from under the 30-year-old Duran Decree later this year. "I haven't had anybody sleeping on the floor for over a year," Dart said. "I'm very poised to pull that off. ... We're probably in the neighborhood of six to eight months away from it."

A program to farm out prisoners to other county jails, such as in downstate Mount Vernon, began to ease overcrowding, but is now mostly used as a disciplinary measure, especially against gang kingpins.

"I long ago got tired of the gangs thinking they run the place," he said. Sending them downstate isolates them from fellow gang members loath to make the long drive for a visit. "I cannot tell you how much they hate it down there," he said.

Dart also has rethought the county eviction process, from halting evictions of renters on foreclosed properties to now extending the process to provide families with ample warning and access to social services when evictions are necessary.

Yet Baker, a retired 21-year veteran of the sheriff's police, dismissed Dart's other high-profile campaigns against dogfighting and Internet prostitution as little more than publicity stunts. He leveled charges that Dart, far from being a reformer, indulges in too much of the same old ways. He called the sheriff's police "a patronage dumping ground, filled with cronyism, nepotism and patronage" and suggested he himself was endorsed by the Polish American Police Association in part because of Dart's "clannish" bias promoting Irish-American deputies.

Baker said he wants to extend the jurisdiction of the sheriff's police countywide, not just in unincorporated areas, and that he would form two task forces with dozens of officers: one to assist suburban police departments, the other to help the Chicago Police Department in high-crime areas.

Dart countered that, in the current political and economic environment, the sheriff has to prove himself adept at making more from less resources.

He said he is fighting the "migration" of gangs from the city into the suburbs by employing the same high-tech techniques that Chicago had used to harass gangs out of the city in the first place. By superimposing maps of crime activity on top of known gang areas with intelligence provided by informers in the county jail, and working with local police departments, he hopes to hit gangs before they got settled in a new area. He pointed to the recent Operation Room Service which rounded up hundreds of drug and prostitution suspects along Mannheim Road south of O'Hare International Airport, as an example of success along those lines.

Baker said he would concentrate on being sheriff, not political aspirations.

But Dart downplayed any notion of running for higher office.

"In spite of people seriously questioning my sanity, I really enjoy what I do," Dart said. "So many people were just mystified by my lack of interest in the county board president's race or the Senate seat.

"My future is linked to how I perform," he added. "I love what I'm doing. I will stay at whatever job and go on to whatever job excites me, where I can make a difference."