Chicago State Representative’s Anti-Facial Recognition Technology Bill Is a Threat to Public Safety
Chicago lawmaker authors bill to strip Chicago Police of one of the most important tools to assist police investigations
Perhaps those once plentiful hack politicians who dominated Illinois’ landscape years ago weren't so bad after all.
Those old school pols never would have created something as calamitous as the no-cash bail SAFE-T Act.
But before we go into more details, let’s look back at a classic movie.
There is a scene in the 1972 Robert Redford film, The Candidate, that was quite accurate for its time.
Redford’s Bill McKay character, a liberal Democrat who is a cross between John F. Kennedy and Jerry Brown, is a candidate for U.S. Senate in California. His opponent is a stock Republican cutout character, Crocker Jarman, a popular three-term incumbent.
In that scene, McKay is convinced by his campaign manager that making a media appearance at a raging forest fire in Malibu is the perfect opportunity for him to attack Jarman and his environmental record. But the Republican dramatically flies in on a helicopter and upstages McKay at the wildfire; Jarman tells reporters that he will utilize his powerful position in Washington to send speedy aid to the victims of the blaze.
This is reactive rather than proactive politics, but playing the game in such a fashion is usually somewhat successful. It’s good government— perhaps merely adequate — but certainly not great.
Chicago and Illinois used to be, for better or worse, controlled by politicians who were reelected multiple times by reacting to the present, rather than planning for the future. Those pols were far from perfect. For instance, they are largely responsible for Illinois’ many public worker pension crises.
But reactive politics is much better than governing by ignoring reality, which is what most elected officials in Illinois do now. The Land of Lincoln, sadly, has devolved from adequate government to awful.
Foremost among those guilty politicians is Kelly Cassidy, a progressive Democrat, who has been the state representative for the 14th District -- which covers Edgewater and Rogers Park on Chicago's North Side — since she was appointed to that seat in 2011.
The murder of Sheridan Gorman
Last month, in a tragic crime that deservedly gained international attention, a Loyola University freshman, Sheridan Gorman, was allegedly murdered by Jose G. Medina, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela with an active warrant for his arrest because he skipped a Cook County court hearing after being charged for shoplifting.
Gorman was fatally shot in the back as she and some friends walked on a pier at Tobey Prinz Beach. That beach lies within Cassidy’s district.
If Cassidy was an old-school public servant, she would have, in front of television cameras of course -- Crocker Jarman-like -- promised to write new legislation that would make it less likely that such a crime could happen again.
But Cassidy, whose hair is dyed blue, that is, when it's not colored purple, is a hardened leftist beholden to her ideology. In February, Cassidy introduced House Bill 5521, the Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act, which, according to most legal experts, will ban state and local law enforcement from utilizing facial recognition when investigating crimes.
Even the ACLU, which supports the bill, agrees on that point.
Medina, who until being jailed as a suspect in the Gorman murder, lived in a refugee shelter in Cassidy’s district.
Chicago Police Department officials credit facial recognition tools for its capture the illegal alien.
CWB Chicago has a list of other crimes solved with that technology.
Cassidy’s destructive bill
Cassidy, if she possessed an ounce of common sense inside that thick blue skull of hers, would have immediately withdrawn HB5521 from consideration by the General Assembly. Instead, she’s doubling down on her insanity. And she has since added two House co-sponsors to her bill, Lilian Jiménez of Chicago, who represents a Northwest Side district, and Kevin Olickal of Skokie, whose district covers part of Chicago’s Far North Side.
Cassidy is the chairperson of the Restorative Justice and Public Safety Committee; Jiménez also serves on that committee.
Last month, CWB Chicago emailed Cassidy about her bill -- she ignored that message. But that dogged news source followed up. An aide responded with a statement declaring that among other things, “facial recognition technology is demonstrably inaccurate.”
Of course, if it were not for facial recognition technology, Medina might still be walking the streets of Rogers Park and beyond.
In one of its reports about HB5521, CWB Chicago explained that facial recognition technology is particularly useful in identifying suspects accused of random attacks on the CTA. Such barbarity is an increasingly common occurrence on public transportation in Chicago.
Cassidy’s statement also makes the shaky claim “that people being misidentified by facial recognition technology and held for hours (if not days) based on system errors.” But when the news source pressed Cassidy’s office for details on such wrongful arrests in Illinois, CWB Chicago didn’t receive a reply.
The anti-informant culture that dominates Chicago’s criminal class is as strong as ever -- perhaps stronger. That societal illness partially explains why so few Chicago murders are successfully prosecuted. Banning law enforcement from utilizing facial recognition technology will only make solving crimes in Illinois even harder.
This week, while being interviewed about the Nancy Guthrie case by the Chicago Contrarian's Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM’s The Morning Answer, Paul Huebl, a private detective and former Chicago Police officer, laid down the reality about modern law enforcement investigations. “Today,” he said, “our murders aren’t solved by witnesses anymore.”
How does Cassidy expect murders to be solved? By having killers turn themselves in to a restorative justice social worker at the local community center? Perhaps.
She checks the right boxes
A visit to Cassidy’s website gives visitors a useful exercise in left-wing box-checking. “Proud mom. Wife. Lesbian. Community Activist. Progressive," it reads. Cassidy has been involved in other destructive legislation. Along with two other Chicago state House members -- Will Guzzardi and Theresa Mah -- Cassidy is a sponsor of House Bill 3518, the Keeping Sex Workers Safe Act, which if passed into law, will legalize prostitution statewide. Cassidy was also the principal sponsor the bill that legalized cannabis in Illinois. And she is a staunch supporter of the no-cash bail SAFE-T Act.
Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, Cassidy’s wife, Candace Gingrich, was employed from 2019 until 2021 by Revolution Cannabis, which operates five dispensaries in Illinois.
Gingrich is the half-sibling of former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Make Cassidy famous
49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden, has seen at least two protests outside her aldermanic office at 1447 W. Morse because of her boneheaded and insensitive comments made shortly after the murder of Gorman, stating the victim was in the “wrong place, wrong time.” Here’s another coincidence: just a half-block to the west, on the opposite side of Greenview, sits Cassidy’s Chicago office.
If you are thinking of protesting Hadden, while you are there you can also make the short walk and say “Hello” to Cassidy. You won’t need facial recognition tools to identify her. She’ll be the one with blue hair -- or perhaps it’s purple again. While you are there, tell her how you feel about HB5521. And offer your opinion on legalized prostitution and the SAFE-T Act too.
Just as with Hadden, this is an opportunity to make Cassidy famous.
And Cassidy better not turn protesters away as Hadden did. Because, as they'll tell you, leftist politicians are always “for the people.” Even though they are among our worst listeners.
And if street protesting is not your thing -- generally it isn’t among those on the center-right -- then email your state representative and state senator and express your opposition to what is probably the biggest threat to public order in Illinois since the SAFE-T Act was signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker: Cassidy’s Illinois Biometric Surveillance Act.
Cassidy faces voters again in November. As of this writing, she is running unopposed. Cassidy hasn’t had a general election opponent since 2016.
