Anita Alvarez: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: River ForestWebsite: http://www.anitaalvarez2008.comOffice sought: Cook State's AttorneyAge: 52Family: Married with four children.Occupation: Cook County State's AttorneyEducation: Chicago-Kent College of Law, Juris Doctor, 1986 Loyola University Chicago, Bachelor of Science, 1982 Maria High School, Chicago, 1978Civic involvement: I am active in various bar associations and organizations. In 2009, I served as President of the Chicago Bar Association, one of the largest metropolitan bar organizations in the nation. I was also a founding member of the National Hispanic Prosecutors Association and served as its National President. I also serve on the Board of Trustees for Fenwick High School and am active in alumnae activities for my alma mater, Maria High School.Elected offices held: Cook County State's Attorney, 2008 - present.Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: NoCandidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 Gun violence and other violent crimes continue to present an imminent threat to the public and a significant challenge for law enforcement and average citizens in Chicago and throughout Cook County.Since my election in 2008, there have been six Chicago police officers slain in random gun violence, a sobering reminder of this epidemic. One of the most significant public safety initiatives that I have worked on in my first term as State's Attorney is a new law that increases criminal penalties for street gang members arrested by police in possession of loaded weapons.The ?Valadez Law,? written by the State's Attorney's Office and signed into law in Illinois in December of 2009, is named in honor of slain Chicago Police Officer Alejandro Valadez who was killed in June of 2009 while he was on duty and responding to a call ofshots fired in the Englewood community.Defendants convicted under the law now face a mandatory prison sentence instead of being able to obtain probation. Three gang members were charged with the murder of Officer Valadez and I am personally handling the prosecution of these cases.The first defendant, Shawn Gaston, was convicted of murder and sentenced to 125 years on Oct. 28, 2011.The trials for the two remaining defendants are pending. A total of 270 gang members have been charged under the new law with 144 of those cases resulting in convictions or guilty pleas.The remaining cases are pending.Key Issue 2 Human trafficking is a crime that has largely gone unreported and unrecognized here in Cook County. The State of Illinois currently has one of the highest rates of calls on the National Human Trafficking Hotline and the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless estimates that more than 6,000 at-risk children are being trafficked right here in Cook County.As I settled into my role as State's Attorney and began to evaluate the way my office had traditionally handled this crime, it became clear to me that we needed to make some dramatic changes. I created a Human Trafficking Initiative in the State's Attorney's Office dedicated to conducting long-term, proactive investigations into human trafficking operations.In 2010, my office was one of just three governmental agencies in the nation to be chosen to receive federal funding from the U.S. Department of Justice to assist in our efforts.We have also developed a strong alliance of federal, state and local partners to address this crime and we have partnerships with local social service providers so that they can assist us during human trafficking takedowns and step in immediately to provide services to young victims who become caught up in forced prostitution or trafficking.I am particularly proud of our efforts in drafting and helping to bring into law the 'Illinois Safe Children's Act,' which was signed into law in 2009.This new law has become one of the most comprehensive and sweeping pieces of legislation to be enacted by any jurisdiction across the country aimed at protecting children who are victims of sex trafficking. The new law decriminalizes juvenile prostitution and enables us to treat children as victims.It increases criminal penalties for pimps and for the customers of prostitutes and, most importantly, it provides local prosecutors like me with the ability to use wiretaps in criminal investigations of human trafficking rings.Prior to passage of this law, local prosecutors here in Illinois had the authority to use wiretaps as a tool to go after people who were selling drugs, but we could not use wiretaps to go after people selling the sexual services of children.This past August, with the help of this new legislation, we charged 10 Chicago gang members in the nation's first ever state-based wiretap investigation targeting human trafficking.?Operation Little Girl Lost? targeted street gang members who sex trafficked children and young women, some as young as 12 years old, to sell their sexual services on the streets or the internet as a commodity.Key Issue 3 When I ran for State's Attorney, I listened and learned a lot from the voters of Cook County.One of the topics that came up repeatedly was the issue of public corruption and the many scandals that have given our state a very embarrassing reputation.Since my election I have been working very hard to attack this problem and to step up the efforts of my office to attack this problem. At the outset of my administration, I hired a formal federal prosecutor to help lead our efforts to investigate and prosecute cases involving financial, government and public corruption.We reorganized our public corruption and financial crimes units and made fundamental changes to help foster more new case referrals and enhance partnerships with our investigative partners.Based upon these efforts, my Special Prosecutions Bureau has achieved significant improvements in the number and the nature of the public corruption and white collar cases being prosecuted by our office.Since taking office, my administration has indicted 90 offenders on public corruption and professional standards cases (police misconduct). We also launched 'Operation Cookie Jar,' an ongoing effort to target public or government employees who have violated the public trust at the local level, including thefts from park districts, local village boards and township government. This ongoing initiative has already resulted in multiple Class X sentences against defendants.Questions Answers How can the state's attorney's office be improved upon? What changes in operation do you propose? Please be specific.I have worked very hard during my first term as State's Attorney to make the changes that I felt were required in the office and to introduce and implement many new initiatives dealing with crimes such as domestic violence, mortgage fraud, and organized retail theft and fencing.And in an effort to be smarter on crime, we have greatly expanded and enhanced our alternative courts such as drug court and veteran's court which provide significant cost savings to the county and meaningful alternative programming for offenders.But there is certainly room for continued improvement and I will work in that direction and adopt and embrace management or operational changes that I believe can improve the office. Specifically, I will be continuing to introduce new initiatives in the legislative arena that I feel can improve public safety or give prosecutors like myself better tools to fight crime.I have developed a proposal that I will be attempting to obtain legislative passage of which I believe can greatly help local prosecutors target and attack street gangs.We have written the Illinois Street Gang and Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Law (Street Gang RICO) that would allow us to apply the tools of the RICO statute to enable us to investigate and prosecute gangs as organized criminal enterprises.This new law would target gangs that are engaged in a pattern of crimes involving violence such as illegal guns and drugs, sex trafficking, loan sharking and illegal gambling.In this way, different organized crime offenses and different offenders may be joined into a single criminal proceeding and we can dismantle the structure of the gang itself, not just the rank and file members selling drugs on the streets.Under our current statutes, gang leaders can continue to insulate themselves from prosecution and simply replace their underlings when they get arrested, resulting in an endless cycle of incarceration of mostly low level gang members. Another specific area that I intend to focus on moving forward is the Post-Conviction Unit located within our Criminal Prosecutions Bureau.This unit handles the investigation of all post-conviction legal motions and cases that are filed in the Cook County criminal courts involving in which a defendant was convicted of a crime and there is a claim of innocence. I believe that we can be more pro-active in reviewing and handling these cases and I intend to make this a focus of my efforts if I am re-elected to the position of State's Attorney.Do you support or oppose the decision to stop complying with federal requests that suspected illegal immigrants be held in jail for an additional 48 hours after their scheduled release? Please explain.As a prosecutor, it is extremely frustrating when a violent defendant is given a low bond or a bond that enables them to get out of custody and flee the jurisdiction.There is nothing more agonizing than having to tell a victim of a violent crime, or the family of a victim who has been murdered, that the defendant responsible for the crime may never be brought to justice. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has recently requested that my office and others in the criminal justice system come together to share our thoughts on this matter and I am happy to do so.It is my position that a common sense approach is needed and that Cook County needs to honor ICE detainers in most cases in the best interests of public safety.I would agree that spending taxpayer money to incarcerate or detain a person due to a minor offense such as a traffic stop is a wasteful use of resources and can and should be addressed.But I also believe that the Cook County Board should pass an ordinance that directs the Sheriff to comply with federal detainers for all felony offenders.I would also urge compliance with detainers for recidivist offenders who commit crime after crime, be they felonies or misdemeanors. A detainer should also be complied with even in cases of first time misdemeanor offenders if they are charged with a crime of violence. In my view, this should not be viewed as an immigration issue nor should it be given greatest priority as a cost savings issue, although I do support the county's contention that Cook County should be reimbursed by federal authorities for the costs associated with the compliance of their detainers. But ultimately, this is first and foremost a public safety issue and I think the citizens of Cook County expect and deserve that we will do everything within our power to keep them safe and to hold violent offenders accountable for their crimes.What, if anything, should be done to improve the state's attorney's handling of sexual assualt investigations and conviction rate?With regard to cases related to the crime of sexual assault, the Cook County State's Attorney's Office recognizes the severity of these personal violations and has specialized units within the office to give these cases the specific attention they require.Assistant State's Attorneys assigned to our Sex Crimes Division are specially trained to review allegations of sexual assault and to prosecute offenders charged with sexual crimes.As with all cases, sexual assault allegations are reviewed on a case by case basis, on their own merit.Prosecutors work with local law enforcement to review all evidence as it relates to the allegation and will follow the law to determine whether there is sufficient legal basis to charge an offender with a sexual assault. Cook County prosecutors approve more than 70 percent of all sexual assault allegations brought to us by local law enforcement agencies.If charges are not immediately approved, prosecutors can continue the case if appropriate for further investigation, reject charges or seek misdemeanor charges where appropriate. In an effort to improve our efforts, over the past three years I have implemented unprecedented training for my employees as well as offering specialized training for other law enforcement agencies on the crime of sexual assault. My office now offers police agencies, including colleges and campus police agencies, specialized training and information sharing on cases involving non-stranger and alcohol/drug facilitated sexual assault, crimes that can be extremely challenging for police and prosecutors. Additionally, we recently conducted first-of-its-kind extensive domestic violence and sex assault training for our Assistant State's Attorneys, investigators and victim witness assistants.This training included session on victim dynamics, working with survivors of sexual assault and best practices for interviewing victims.My office also recently assisted rape victim advocates in obtaining federal funding to provide extensive (up to 24 hours) of sexual assault training for our employees over the next six months. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office is and will continue to be committed to seeking justice on behalf of all victims of sexual assault.What special knowledge or experience do you have that particularly qualifies you for this office?When I launched my bid to become the Cook County State's Attorney four years ago, I felt that I was the strongest candidate for this position because of my extensive experience working as a prosecutor and in management roles within the office for more than two decades.I felt that I understood the challenges and that I could handle the job.Not everyone agreed with me, but I was extremely fortunate to have been able to make my case with the voters of Cook County and to win the election to this office.Today, as I seek reelection, once again I believe that it is my on-the-job experience that makes me most qualified for this position. I continue to have the same passion for this job and for the work that we do on a day-to-day basis in the State's Attorney's Office.There have been significant challenges in my first term as State's Attorney and I have had to make decisions that have been controversial.But I have not been influenced by politics, public or media pressure and the decisions that I have and will continue to make will be based soley on doing the right thing based on the facts and the evidence before me. I look forward to presenting this record to the voters as they consider my reelection to this very special and very important law enforcement office.Can this office meet budget goals set forth by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle without compromising services' Is so, how? If not, what alternative do you propose?Since my election as State's Attorney my office has consistently worked with and met the budget goals set forth by Board President Preckwinkle.I recognize the challenges that the President faces in attempting to balance the county's budget and dig the county out of massive debt and the State's Attorney's Office has done more than its fair share to address this crisis.The cuts that my office hassustained over the last two years have been devastating to our workforce, resulting in the forced termination of dozens of employees that I consider essential to day-to-day operations.We are struggling on a daily basis to make up for these losses, particularly in our administrative bureau which has been decimated by the job cuts.It is my opinion that all county agencies should not be measured with a cookie-cutter approach -- i.e. 10 percent reduction for all agencies across the board.Instead, each agency should be evaluated individually with an assessment of how the agency performs and how important its services are to Cook County taxpayers.In my view, every agency in Cook County government was not created and does not perform equally and any future cuts that are imposed should be laid upon waste and redundancy and not vital public safety services.