- Local prosecutors have a new way to target street gangs under a measure Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law today.
The new law is modeled after the federal racketeering law known as RICO, which was originally designed to target mobsters but in recent years has been used repeatedly by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago to target the top leadership of street gangs.
Now the state version will allow county prosecutors to take similar action against a street gang as a whole, instead of individual members.
"We may convict the soldier, but we never get the general," said Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, whose office drafted the legislation. "This bill will allow us to attack gangs in a different way."
Anita, you never convict anybody. You plea everything you can and CI everything else. And your office drafting actual legislation doesn't actually fill us with confidence, especially after watching you a few years back attempting to interpret the Second Amendment. We also don't see the County having the financial resources to actually track down gang assets the way the feds do.
Whatever - we'll take a wait-and-see attitude on this one. New strategies have a very short half-life around here if you've noticed.