Courthouse insecurity? July incident, Supreme Court committee suggest new concerns about judicial safety

Someone sent me the link to the August 3 Dan Mihalopoulos article on the WBEZ website, "A Cook County judge expressed fears before a ‘very serious breach’ at the Daley Center."

The article refers to a letter, written in June by Associate Judge Joseph D. Panarese to the Illinois Supreme Court, which warned, "The vast majority of my colleagues do not feel safe at work or at home anymore," and asked the justices "not [to] overlook the dangerous situations that we as Judges are confronted with every day."

The WBEZ article uses Judge Panarese's letter as an omen, or foreshadowing, of an incident that occurred on the 4th floor of the Daley Center on Thursday, July 28.

According to a July 29 letter from Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans to Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart, the incident involved "someone who was walking through the public hallways loudly and belligerently demanding to see ajudge and who then pulled a locked courtroom door open breaking into the courtroom, eliminating all physical obstacles to the private areas where judges and judicial staff work." According to a memo sent by Judge Evans to all judges, the incident was resolved without any "physical harm" when 'quick-thinking' Traffic Division judges pulled courtroom "staff into their chambers and called for assistance."

What makes the incident particularly unsettling is the fact that it occurred in the middle of the day, at approximately 1:00 p.m., according to the Chief Judge's memo, and, according to the Chief Judge's letter to Sheriff Dart, there "appeared to be no deputies available to respond."

In the letter to Sheriff Dart, Evans wrote, "The gradual decrease in staffing in recent years seems to have left all courtroom floors in the Daley Center and other courthouses with the same degree of vulnerability."

Apparently the decrease in the number of courtroom deputies is not a new problem.

Indeed, on July 6, after the Panarese letter but three weeks before the Daley Center incident, the Illinois Supreme Court entered an order establishing a new Supreme Court Committee on Judicial Security and Safety.

In a press release announcing the new Committee, Chief Justice Anne M. Burke is quoted as saying, "Threats to the judiciary continue to increase and the Committee will help us address them."

The Chair of the new Committee will be Jim Cimarossa, the Marshal of the Supreme Court of Illinois. Appointed as members of the Committee are First District Appellate Court Justice Mathias W. Delort, Second District Appellate Court Justice George Bridges, Twelfth Circuit Court Judge Susan T. O’Leary, Cook County Circuit Judge E. Kenneth Wright, Twenty-Second Circuit Court Michael J. Chmiel, and retired Judge Mark A. VandeWiele.

Additional appointed members will include the Executive Director of the Attorney Registration and Discipline Commission (ARDC), a representative of the Illinois State Police, a representative of the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, and a representative of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police.