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U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, D-Downers Grove, hosted a virtual
townhall meeting Tuesday in which residents of the county could
call and ask questions.
As Casten's guest, Dart was asked what is being done to slow
crime in the county.
"These are complex issues with all sorts of different rationales
behind how we got there, what can work and what can't work,"
Dart said. "There needs to be an understanding of A, what the
facts are, and B, that this is complex with multiple facets to
the whole thing."
Dart said there have been improvements over the past few years
when looking at violent crime.
"Have there been improvements in a lot of different areas of
crime? There have been," Dart said. "Shootings throughout the
country, specifically in Chicago, are down. Have they reached
pre-2019 levels? No."
Last month, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the state's ban on
certain semi-automatic firearms in Illinois. However, Dart said
guns are still more prevalent than ever before.
"The wild availability of guns is incredible," Dart said. "I've
never seen it, from my days as a prosecutor till now. It used to
be rare to pull someone over and find a gun, but now it's
flipped. Now it's rare when we don't find a gun in a car."
Carjackings have also increased in the county over the past few
years. Dart said they have slowed in 2023, but with how many
they were seeing each year, the numbers had no choice but to go
down.
"If you took all the carjackings in New York, Los Angeles,
Washington D.C., Philadelphia, the big ones, put them all
together, and we had more [carjackings] than any of them
collectively last year," Dart said.
Motor vehicle thefts are up 94%, and burglaries are up 29% year
to date. Robberies are up 24% year to date, according to Chicago
Police statistics. Shootings are down 12% year to date.
Dart became sheriff of Illinois' largest county in 2006 and
previously spent time in the Illinois General Assembly.
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