Bob Fioretti: “We need to get violent criminals off the streets, it’s as simple as that.”  

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Jeff Berkowitz: “It’s May 24th, we’ll find out [about Paul Vallas] perhaps this weekend, what if Vallas ran for Mayor, what if you ran for Cook County Board President…do you think you would have a team?”

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Jeff Berkowitz interviews Bob Fioretti on how to stop violent crimes in Chicago and Cook County. Fioretti, a former two-term Chicago Alderman, is a possible appointment by the Cook County and Chicago GOP to be their candidate to stop Toni Preckwinkle in her November 2022 bid for a fourth term as Cook Country Board President.

If not Bob, who? If not now, when?

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To watch our show with Bob Fioretti laying out his argument on how to stop Chicago’s and Cook’s lethal violence, please click here.

Or watch Bob Fioretti on cable in the City of Chicago on Ch. 21 (CAN TV):

This Monday night, 8:30 pm and midnight

Tuesday night, 9:02 pm (as the lead segment of the two-hour block of IL Channel programming airing this coming week around the State)   

Saturday morning, 8:30 am

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Preckwinkle, 75, 170K salary, is the Pharoah with a capital P, controlling (w/Chief Judge Evans, 79, 192K salary) much of Cook County’s governmental and judicial apparatus, through her positions as Cook County Board President and Chair of the Cook County Democratic Party.

To reduce violent crimes sharply in Chicago and Cook County, we must treat criminals as criminals, not as victims. But Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, 59 (192K Mayoral salary, down from her almost $ 1 Million/yr as Mayer, Brown Partner), Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, Cook County’s Chief Judge Tim Evans and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart (“LPFED”) refuse to do that, no matter the destruction and havoc their approach to crime wreaks on Chicago, Cook and Illinois.  

John Kass calls LPFE the Four Furies. Berkowitz calls LPFED the Axis of Evil. But what is in a name. A crime policy that is completely ineffective is destroying the City, County and the State- whatever you call it.

In short- Lightfoot, Preckwinkle, Foxx, Evans, and Dart do not believe in the pro-active, constitutional policing that is necessary to reduce violent crimes dramatically.  

LPFED won’t pursue a unified law enforcement approach to dealing with violent crime that involves vigorous investigation of crime by police, arrest of criminals when probable cause is established, detention in jail (not bonding out) of those arrested repeatedly for violent crimes when evidence shows them to be a danger to society, vigorous prosecution by the State’s Attorney, stiff sentencing w/o probation or parole when the evidence and circumstances warrant that, and confinement in prison in accord with those sentences.

Both Berkowitz and Fioretti agree that all the above should be done in the context of on-going reform that provides for legal and constitutional policing.

Berkowitz says we do not need to be WOK, but we need De-WOK reform, like the de-regulation reform that has invigorated America for decades.   

Further, Fioretti highlights the importance of clean and safe communities for kids to grow up in so they can become responsible, adult members of civil society.

Finally, Berkowitz and Fioretti discuss the failure of CPS to teach kids how to read- which contributes mightily to kids joining gangs and the toxic increase in violent crimes in Chicago.

There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come. And as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would surely say, if he were alive to see the vast destruction today by crime of people’s lives and property (especially minorities) in Chicago, Cook and the rest of Illinois:

The “Fierce urgency of now,” demands that all good people join together today to start the change in LPFED’s disastrous crime policies.

That change will bring us closer to making, almost six decades later, Dr. King’s dream a full reality [Watch 4:13-5:10 and 12:33-50].