Kennedy focuses on key justice issues
I see two problems in Lake County that a new state’s attorney can help solve: police brutality and a misguided and possibly corrupt court system.
It doesn’t make the news that often, but police brutality is a reality. Ask some of the folks in North Chicago. Ask some of the folks in the Round Lake area.
In what a friend of mine calls pockets of poverty in one of the richest counties in America, police brutality is a constant source of fear. Our court system has proved itself to be quite effective at successfully prosecuting criminals, sending them off to prison at a phenomenal rate — even if they’re not guilty of anything more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time — and being the wrong color.
Chris Kennedy knows that the underlying cause of police brutality is a police culture of aggressive adversarial animosity. This diseased culture promotes an “us against them” mentality, “us” being the police, “them” being all the rest of us.
We are criminals in their eyes until proven innocent. “Shoot first and ask questions later.” The scary thing is they get to carry guns and we don’t. That culture can be turned around and Chris Kennedy knows how to do it.
Chris Kennedy is taking advantage of new DNA technology to overturn wrongful convictions, but his intentions go much deeper than a reliance on a sexy new technology. He wants to overturn all wrongful convictions.
No other candidate except Chris Kennedy is talking about these two issues: police brutality and wrongful convictions. But these should be of paramount importance to all of us. We are, after all, talking about equal protection under the law. Our rights, our liberty, our protection. YOUR protection. I say, it’s about time. We need to elect Chris Kennedy as state’s attorney.
M. Max Maxwell
Round Lake Park