Kim Foxx sees legacy as helping community trust law enforcement

Beginning early next month, Kim Foxx is looking forward to starting her days without reading about violence.

After eight years as Cook County’s top prosecutor, 12 before that as an assistant state’s attorney and three with the office of the public guardian, Foxx said it has been “decades of sadness first thing in the morning,” as she briefs herself on cases that came in overnight.

But the reports were also motivating, she said, inspiring her to try to make the county better.

In her exit interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, the controversial prosecutor discussed her still murky future plans, her emphatic belief she could have won a third term — and her strong opinion she’s faced unfair criticism for her treatment of police officers and her handling of the notorious Jussie Smollett case.

A promise of change

Foxx entered office with a mandate for reform in the wake of the murder of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer. The same year, the city saw a dramatic spike in homicides.

Her tenure was marked by massive social justice protests against law enforcement that at times descended into rioting and violence. In her second term, a global pandemic forced her to run the office and enforce the state’s laws from home.

Foxx, the first Black woman elected top prosecutor in Cook County, became a favored target for attacks from conservatives on Chicago’s entrenched ills.

After her successor, former Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke, is sworn into office Dec. 2, Foxx says she needs a break but isn’t sure how long that will last, but “a few months.”

“I don't know how many are in a few, but more than two,” she said.

She's still coy when discussing next steps. Foxx said she's not interested in running for a new office right now and would prefer to find a job that's less in the public eye.

“I’m trying to get in touch with what are the aspects of this job that even if I don't do this, I’d like to take somewhere else, and I’m still mulling that,” she said.

Foxx said her legacy accomplishments, including helping to make Illinois the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail and building a system to expunge marijuana convictions, have become enshrined in state law.

"There's very little I'm concerned will be rolled back," Foxx said.

Other signature policy issues for the office, including a focus on reviewing cases of alleged wrongful conviction and data transparency, will live on past her tenure. Last week, Attorney General Kwame Raoul announced he was creating a similar statewide unit that Foxx says would have been unlikely if not for her efforts, which have seen hundreds of cases overturned since she took office.

O'Neill Burke has said she will continue many of Foxx’s policies after taking office, including support for restorative justice alternatives to criminal proceedings, looking at new ways to approach juvenile justice and a commitment to reviewing claims of wrongful conviction.

“The state’s attorney-elect has said that she would prosecute retail theft differently than I have, and that’s certainly her prerogative. But there’s very little I’m concerned will be rolled back,” Foxx said. “She’s earned the right with her election to have her own priorities.”

Foxx is confident she would have won a third term, saying the criticisms of “a minority who didn’t vote for her” have been over amplified by the media.

“I would not have won so handily in 2020 if people believed that I didn’t care about crime and that we needed to reform the system,” she said.

The narrative that portrays her as not caring about fighting crime or being anti-police has been particularly frustrating for her, she said, citing data her office has published online she says proves she's been an aggressive prosecutor of violence.

“You will never find a quote where I said anything inflammatory about police,” she said. “I’ve said I will hold officers accountable if they go afoul of the law. I’ve said we’ve had issues with police misconduct. I’ve never said anything but that I need police to be legitimate and credible, [because] they’re on every single one of my criminal cases.”

The shadow of Smollett

Foxx made going after police misconduct a central issue in her campaign to oust her predecessor Anita Alvarez. She later spoke out against the sentence Jason Van Dyke received for killing McDonald and said she supported a federal civil rights case against the former officer.

But her handling of the Smollett case arguably led to a final break with rank-and-file officers she was never able to recover from. Foxx remains incredulous and defensive about the situation.

“It does bother me … everyone didn’t see it the same,” she says of the reaction across the city. “There were people in neighborhoods impacted by violence who said, ‘Jussie, that loser, he’s a liar, boo-hoo,' and then let it go.”

A rising actor on the hit television show, “Empire,” Smollett claimed he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump as he walked back to his home on a freezing night in January 2019.

His claims were unraveled by investigating Chicago police detectives, and he was eventually charged with making false statements to authorities.

Foxx recused herself from the case after media outlets reported she had spoken with Smollett’s family about the case.

Early in the investigation, Smollett’s “family reached out because they didn’t think CPD was taking Jussie serious[ly] as a victim,” Foxx said about the chain of events. “They didn’t reach out and say, ‘Cover for my brother.’ They reached out and said, ‘Can you make sure the police look into this more deeply?’”

But the state’s attorney also said she recused herself because of false rumors that she was related to Smollett. And text messages released by the office through a public records request showed she had continued to discuss the case with staff, including she thought the charges “excessive.”

Foxx maintains she wasn’t part of the decision to drop the charges, which eventually led to a special prosecutor being appointed and Smollett being charged again — his conviction and a legal saga still not resolved as he waits for a ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court on his appeal.

An investigation by Special Prosecutor Dan Webb ultimately cleared Foxx of serious wrongdoing but found Foxx made several false or misleading statements.

She said Tuesday for the first time that Webb referred her to the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which regulates attorneys in the state, over the Smollett case. Foxx said the commission, which doesn’t make its cases public unless it brings a formal complaint, cleared her.

Still, Webb’s judgment still bothers her.

“So I’m a little pissed that my narrative gets to be shaped by Dan Webb … he gets to be credible, and I don’t,” she said.

She found Webb’s statements about Smollett’s case hypocritical in light of a letter he wrote to the court in support of Ed Burke before the former Chicago City Council member was sentenced earlier this year on racketeering and corruption charges.

Foxx hopes her most significant impact was to in some way improve the trust people in minority communities have with the justice system.

“Until people believe they can trust police officers to do no harm to them we’ll be ... having the same conversation five state’s attorneys from now about why there’s a rift between law enforcement and the community.”