Friday, May 04, 2012

by Sabrina Wu

After a decision was made to save money by centralizing weekend and holiday bond courts at 26th and California, suburban police forces expressed some concern. For several months, police chiefs worried about the staffing and transportation burden they would bear in transporting inmates to the centralized location for bond court, in Chicago, as opposed to their suburban district courthouse for bond hearings, which had been the practice for many years.

Cook County Sheriff Thomas J. Dart met with the Suburban Police Chiefs over the past few months to listen and discuss the concerns they had with the closings. In response to their concerns, Sheriff Dart, in conjunction with Commissioner Larry Suffredin, have developed a plan to help ease the burden the suburban police departments were facing.

Beginning this weekend in Maywood, followed by staggering start dates for Skokie and Markham, Sheriff Dart will be providing transportation from these designated courthouses to Central Bond Court, located at 26th and California, on weekends and Holidays.

The start date for each of these locations varies, please see the schedule below.

• May 5th, District 4 Municipalities can begin dropping inmates off at the Maywood Courthouse

• May 12th, Districts 2 and 3 Municipalities can begin dropping inmates off at the Skokie Courthouse

• June 9th, Districts 5 (which is responsible for Burr Ridge and Indian Head Park court cases) and 6 Municipalities can begin dropping inmates off at the Markham Courthouse.

Individual police departments are still responsible for ensuring each inmate arrives with the proper arrest and charging paperwork. If there are any errors, inconsistencies or issues with arrest packets, the arresting agency will be responsible for the correcting the issue. Also, each department still has the option to drop the inmates off directly to the Criminal Courthouse building if they choose to do so.

*Patch reached out to Burr Ridge Police Chief for his thoughts on the move to centralize bond court efforts, but he is out of the office for the next week.

*The above article was a media announcement from the Cook County Sheriff's Office.