YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Dart

lines on the record: 62
first: 2015-12-03
most recent: 2015-12-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Would be amazing. And so there are lots of hopeful strategies out there, but I think the strategies that are going to find the most success are the smaller, more targeted ones than the sweeping ones because my experience has been the sweeping ones usually crumble.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this state, honestly, I don't know where to start with this state. Our governor is studying the problem, which is fantastic because it's only been studied by about a thousand people in the last year or so. But apparently he's going to find something new. And when he studies this, what are they going to do at the end of the day? At the end of the day, I think they'll find themselves carving around the edges. So move afoot nationally and locally for some changes? There's some. What we've been doing is trying to carve out populations. And that's been my strategy from the get-go as opposed to trying to come up with sweeping broad programs. It's to carve out populations, the mentally ill, the poor, the people that are in there on crimes that don't jeopardize anybody and society couldn't accept that we don't need to lock them up. Work on those populations, leave the violent people for another day as far as in the criminal justice world. And in doing that, we'd have staggering numbers of people not in our criminal justice system. The impact on those communities...”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do see some of it, you know, some of the changes that are talked about in the federal level, which is only 13% of the criminal justice world anyways. B, I think it will end up being sort of a little carving around the edges. The president's done some really cool things with directing some specific things at specific populations. But as far as the sweeping ones, traditionally in the legislative world, they get watered down to where their significance isn't as great. So there'll be some changes there, but I do think at the end of the day, no one's going to sit there and say, well, we've really got this thing under control. On state levels,”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In issues that matter, then I think my generation was growing up. And so the hope is that we have these young people coming up that are far, far removed from being self-absorbed. They really care. And that to me is where the hope is, but this next generation is going to fix some of these things. They want to in their engagement.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you, in all seriousness, I was talking to someone earlier about you know what the hope is in this. The hope is through, and this isn't just to plug, it isn't, but the hope is through the students that you have here at University of Chicago. I have been blown away with not just their empathy, but their thoughtfulness and their concern on this issue. When you had asked me to come here, honestly, I didn't know if I'd be doing a lecture in front of a room with just you and me in there talking. And the number of people that not just have attended, but have interacted with me outside of this, office hours, at different places they have me speaking, has been overwhelming. And I found it particularly interesting for me because, you know, I'm like anybody else. I suppose you read the papers and you develop some of your opinions that way. You hear about this generation and their self-absorbed. They're caught up in their social media and all the rest of it. I couldn't find anything further from the truth. I found myself thinking to myself, they are more engaged.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we should be intervening a lot earlier with in both our child welfare system, our June essays. Oh, God, yes. And it's not rocket science to do it. And yet when you have this, I mean, there's just a report out today about our child welfare system. I've been talking about it for decades. It was my big issue down in Springfield, but it gotten a little better, but it's back there again. Why, again, do we have a system like that that is the states come in and taken a child away from a setting because bad things were done to that child? We're their parent now. Would any parent in their right mind do what our system does to them? Oh, God, no. I mean, to start with the fact, I picked the one that's so obvious. When kids take off from the system, we weren't even tracking that. I mean, what parent would not be indicted if their kid took off and you didn't get around looking for them for a month? That's what we did. And why was that? Because we didn't care.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, we find people in the jail, once again, to show you the thoughtlessness and carelessness that criminal justice doesn't, why wouldn't anybody in their right mind say, you know, hey, one of the many things that we are going to be pouring through on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, take your pick, is what is the connection between our criminal justice system and our child welfare system? When I tried to do that in Springfield, you would have thought I was trying to change our former government to communism. And I was like, oh, we can't do that. I was like, why is that? We all knew the answer. No one wanted to find the connection. But you have these broken systems that people don't by and large care about because it doesn't impact them. This is just that other world that we don't want to talk about we don't see. Well, Kwan was one of them. He was in our broken child welfare system too, and then he graduated beyond that, had apparently some interactions with the juvenile justice system as well. I believe nothing of significance, but would he be someone that clearly would fit?”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As well. There isn't. And that's what I found to be so startling when we've been analyzing the populations there. It's just the mentally ill, that's just so embarrassingly obvious. And those numbers are staggering. But then when you talk about the young man.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Please, absolutely. I mean, the amount of people that are sitting there because they're poor is staggering. It's outrageous. It's a stain on everybody in our community that we're. You're poor. You're going to sit in a jail. If you have money, you get out. That's not what the criminal justice system is supposed to be about. You have that. But then, as it's with just these staggering numbers that you have in there as well, there are too many people that are being put into jail by default that they're at the wrong place at the wrong time and they're being swept up. And it doesn't have to be like that. A much more thoughtful process can and needs to be put in place so that jails and prisons are for violent people. And that's it. And that if there's an occasional outlier that I'm unaware of, then I suppose you can talk about that. But outside of that, there's no thoughtful reason why so many of these people are in the jails in the prison.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The numbers don't lie. I mean, the numbers don't lie that it is disproportionately impacting people of color in the jail setting. And I've often over the years, because of my background as being a prosecutor and like, have always tried not to overgeneralize. But the reality of it is that the criminal justice system, if not being monitored judiciously will, in a very benign way sweep up all sorts of people. And there needs to be a much more thoughtful approach to who it is that we're incarcerating. And I can just tell you from my experience in the jail, and I talk to Tanis, but I then run their backgrounds too. So I'm not just taking everyone's word for granted. Run their backgrounds. And as a former prosecutor, I can sit there and tell you, I have no idea why these people are in the jail. And so are people getting swept up who shouldn't be in jail? Absolutely.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But there's a level of empathy here where you're understanding that, you know, things aren't as neat as we all might want them to be. And so I think that's where I sense from talking to friends of mine in the police departments that they feel that a lot of folks just don't understand how difficult their jobs are. And then they sort of, not in a bad way, close ranks, but then they become more insular. But on the other”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's definitely, I mean, from the police mentality, they rightfully feel that they have a horrifically dangerous job. And it is. I mean, my God, the situations that they go into it, they are. I think what occurs then is that a lot of people within departments then start feeling like it's a little bit like us against them, where people don't understand us. They don't understand how difficult it is, and they make snap decisions. And so I think then people, you know, circle the wagons to sort of, I'm not saying in a criminal way to protect their own, that type of thing, but they feel people don't understand. They don't understand the difficulties. They don't understand the issues they're making these judgments that aren't completely based on all the realities of the street. What I think it's lost in the shuffle and when people have those discussions are that on the other side of it, those are very real feelings too, that in a community that feels overwhelmed with crime, they need to all”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you know that at this point in time that the mayor would be in the best position to see that, but giving all that's going on, that there's probably a need for different direction so that the public will, you know, so much is like simple.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't. I mean, I talk to too many people who just are just so distrustful. And I wish I had the magic fairy dust to say, okay, this will make it all go away. multiple things that lead people to feel that way and this video will do nothing but further that feeling that there's a lack of trust that they can't trust people.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Changes that have occurred in gang structures. They have. I mean, they've become more factionalized on the street. Absolutely. I see it even more so in the jail that the factions on the street which have factionalized are even more factionalized in the jail where they have new gang variations in the jail. And does that create all sorts of issues and problems? Oh, God, yes, it does. So that objectively has gone on. But as far as going after the issues regards to the shootings and the like and the gangs in the neighborhood, one of the most important prongs of trying to deal with this issue is the level of trust and the people realize that they are in a difficult situation in law enforcement there to help you, that we're no different than anybody else, that we have bad apples. We have bad apples, but that across the board that we're all pulling in the same direction.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How that's going to impact itself in the jail and the communities, obviously nothing good and will it further people's distrust of law enforcement? God, yes, absolutely it will. And it's the very thing that there is no magic fairy dust that will make communities all of a sudden rise up and say, you know what, we're going to tell everything we know about this criminal and that criminal that's a complicated issue. But when you have a lack of trust, it isn't hard to then explain the code of silence in communities and why people don't come forward and things like that. It really just makes what is already difficult, inherently difficult all the more difficult. And it's been mentioned before, yes. Are there like objectives?”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think I share the feelings of so many that when I saw the tape, I was horrified by it. I mean, You hear about shootings, you see things in movies, but you see a tape like that, it just horrified you because you can't, A, this young man was killed, you know, was shot and charged, the officers charged with murder now, shot and killed. The way it was done is just something that is”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got two kids. I've got to pay for them. And I got to feed myself. He goes, I can always get a job dealing dope. That's always there and I can make money doing that. So I'll probably do that and I'll probably get caught again. And I remember afterwards, we didn't, you know, I said, well, good luck. And I hope you don't come back here. And I remember thinking to myself, everything he said was logical. There wasn't anything there. It was like he's evil. He wants to go out and hurt people. He wants to do bad things. He didn't want to go back and get involved with the criminal justice system, but he did the analysis that what are his real options? You know, what are his real ones? I remember there was no preachiness from my point. It was like, well, no one knows you got to re-examine your life here, sir. It was like, no, I'd probably do the same thing. And so when you have that as the recurring pattern here, I think it's incumbent upon us to put together the strategies for success that aren't going to be successful 100% of the time, but at least it's a strategy.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In no one sit there holding their hand saying, Hey, we're going to give you this new career path and the rest of it. So, of course, they go back to community. And of course, I had the most fascinating conversation with a detainee one day that blew me away in its clarity. And when I was talking to him, I was more or less asking about how was your experience at the jail? Do we treat you appropriately? And then I said, do you want to come back? He goes, oh, God, no, you guys treated me fine and everything was great. It's gotten so much better because I don't want to come back here. And then I just asked him, and it wasn't in some type of snarky way. What can you tell me that would lead me to believe you're not coming back? And he just paused for a second. Remember, the pause was what got me. He thought for about 10 seconds and then looked at me and said, you know, Tom, I'm probably coming back. It was with complete resignation. And I said, well, why? And he said, Tom, you know, I didn't have a lot of opportunities beforehand. Now I got a felony conviction when I go back. And he goes.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Off to MIT when they leave, they're heading back to the community they left from. That community didn't have much to start with. And what have we retrained them while they're with us? Well, no, a jail does not have that luxury. I'm trying to come up with all sorts of really crazy programming for the place, but jails get confused with prisons. Prisons the warden knows to the minute when the guy's getting out, jails, people come and go all the time. The cases get dismissed. They plea out, whatever it is. 80-some percent of the people in a jail end up going directly from the jail to the community. But yet people have never appreciated that fact. I mean, so that's where the programming, the thoughtfulness needs to be, and that's never been that way. It's always been in the prisons, yet we're the biggest funnel back to the community. So you have this person that's now involved in the criminal justice system. You're funneling them back to five zip codes are disproportionately represented throughout the city of Chicago. It's like five zip codes, get the majority of people coming back to the communities. The communities don't have any infrastructure to take these people back.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It tells me a lot of things. I mean, the obvious, which is that the criminal justice system is disproportionately impacting the African American community. You don't have to be liberal or conservative to suggest that. That's just the truth. But then the other part of it, too, I would suggest if you're a thoughtful person, it would lead you to say, okay, what does that lead us to believe about community support systems and the like? And have we done the analysis to see what is that are leading to these disproportionate numbers? And that's what I have found to be so fascinating when you look at this. You almost find yourself saying, well, what do you expect to occur? So you have a community that has loads and loads of issues, okay? No jobs. The housing stock is a wreck foreclosures everywhere. Schools are modest at best. So you have that as starters. Now a person leaves and gets a felony conviction. Where are they going back to? Well, they're not heading.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disproportionate. You are disproportionately represented in the jail then. It's almost consistently seventy-five, seventy-eight percent African American, about 15% Latino, and maybe 10% white. And it's almost consistently been that way for decades.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That. And so we're putting together, sending it around the country to other jurisdictions to get them to buy into it because other jurisdictions have been facing these same problems and they've been looking for answers. And I'm not saying that I came up with the answer. I think having Dr. Jones in there now is, I don't want to say the final piece of it. I had the plan in place and was being executed, now having someone at the head of the jail who was actually a psychologist, I think, takes it even further. But LA and New York have been having horrible problems with these issues, and we've been working with them a lot on this. And there seems to be this national movement now, at least with the mentally ill, to change the way we're operating here. What is the demographic?”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fine, fine institution, absolutely. This is product placement. Yes, it is. But this is fascinating. He approached me, knew what we were doing, and he wanted on his own, costing me zero to get involved on the ground floor with the analytics of it, which was so amazing because we wanted to do that because we didn't want to have another program. We know and studies it to see if it's effective. And here we had it done for free. And so he's been studying it since we started in the early returns are startling. Startling in a good way. In a good way. And I want to say they were expected because what would you expect if you went from literally dumping people in the streets at all hours of the night who are mentally ill at all times of the year and the winter so on to a place where you're holding their hand, you're getting them ready to hit the streets. You have discharge plans for them. In some cases, drive them to their houses. You're finding housing. Of course you're going to have more success. Well, we're seeing that. And our goal is by doing that, we're going to be able to pack.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Live when they don't even where to go when they leave. I usually house about 120 people, 130 people a day that don't even where to live that I find houses housing for them. And I've been trying to get more money, but it's been tricky some of the other players don't think it's their job. But we put together a systemic approach to them. And because it's only been going two years now or so, we don't have all the studies yet, but I have an individual from University of Chicago who heard about what I was doing.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hugged me crying saying it's the first time anybody ever cared. And it's the first time I have a path because their needs are pretty straightforward. We have like a family support group we started two years ago. It's been really wild where we're getting their families reengaged with people that are sort of had they're familiar ties broken. And usually the detainees are the first to admit they caused all of the problems themselves. So we're bringing them back together. And it's not just this rosy picture. It's a little torturous, but we're doing that with this notion that we're going to have them stabilize for the community. We're staying engaged with them so that we're keeping them on their meds, reminding them of the court dates that they still have court dates. Keeping them in housing and on their meds is so huge. And we've had a great deal of luck with that so far. The housing's been more of a challenge. I'm running out of money to find the places.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are, they are, and it's been fascinating. There's Sky's. I'm not going to lie to you. There's guys that are seriously mental ill who want nothing to do with us. The majority do. And I try not to live by anecdote. I never have, never will, but there's been some that have been somewhat telling to me. Usually when I go into like a living unit of non-mental ill, they're usually talking to me about their case and apparently none of them have done it because they're all innocent from what they've told me. And that's the whole discussion point. When I go to the living units for the mentally ill, they're knocking each other over to tell me they absolutely did it. And I keep telling, listen, I don't need to hear about that, okay? That's for you and your lawyer to talk about. I don't need to hear about that. I just want to know how's it going here? What can we do? To a person, they want to tell me they did it and all they're looking for is housing. They want help. And so when we are providing this one, I can't tell you how many grown men have come up to me.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of them, I used to know where they all were at, but one of them was on the west side and we're reopening it and I'm operating it. And so we're going to have our own clinics because what we've been doing once again was never being done before. And this is around the country. This isn't unique here. I mean, this issue is a national issue. Absolutely is national. And the disregard for people is national. It's going on everywhere. It's not unique here. We release people to communities. Well, we now heat map it so we know where people with mental illness, where they're going back, and we're trying to match them to services. When I discharge plan them, I literally give them maps of where all their providers are in the community, where they can get their prescriptions filled.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in the country, and she's doing a phenomenal job. And what I told her from the beginning is, is listen, I will support you on anything here. But she knew that I already had my plan in place when she came in. I'd been doing it for a while, which was we're going to treat these people the way they should be with dignity and as patience, not as criminals. And so we put a continuum of care together from the time they hit our door, we analyzed why they're there, we plead with the judges to get them into diversions and not sitting in a jail, we give programs for them when they're in the jail. Then I discharge plan them. I have a separate place where I house them. I now have a mobile unit where we go to the houses. And actually one of the city clinics that was closed like three years ago, whatever, we're reopening it wins in February.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Adults to do that. You have all these mentally ill people dumped into the system who really are not committing crimes of anything other than trying to survive on the street. How can we as a society not hold ourselves culpable and say, listen, we are doing this, okay? No different than in the time of Dickens when they did their horrible things to people who were mentally ill or poor and things like that. We're doing the same thing and we're going to be judged the same way 100 years from now. So we need to stop right now bringing the right type of mindset and someone like her provides that for me. The other folks I had run in the jail were really good, the woman before her is an attorney who wasn't from the jail world. The person before that was a former prosecutor, wasn't from the jail world. So I had been doing different iterations of the non-traditional route of running a jail. But this is the, I don't want to say the final iteration, but this is a mental health professional. We believe the first time ever running any jail, let alone the large.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nika Jones, Dr. Nika Jones. Nika, she's an amazing person. She's a psychologist, has worked in Surmac Hospital, which deals with the medical needs of the detainees. And that's where I met her. And I was just blown away by both her compassion on this issue, but also her grasping of it. You know, I mean, I think a lot of folks thought, you know, here he's off on one of his tangents again, you know, getting a doctor to run a place. No, no, no, she gets it. And she understands that there's people that manipulate systems, that people who might not be mentally ill, who are trying to manipulate systems, put it that way. So she gets it on all levels. She understands the jail world, but she also clearly understands this crisis that we're in now, where we have, and I often tell people, you know what, we don't let our kids get away with saying, well, I didn't mean it. Well, how can we allow?”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sheriffs are like that too. When I go sheriff's meetings, I do not fit in. When I first showed up there, I think they thought I worked at the hotel that the first meeting was at. And I was like, oh no, he's the new guy from Cook County. I was like, oh, well, whatever. But you're warding.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get. And in some jurisdictions, you can't get that because they don't even watch that real carefully. But here you weren't even monitoring how many were coming into your system, even if it was for six hours and being thrown back right back to the street, still mentally ill, still no support system, and off they go until they get arrested again, which is usually a couple days later, and this time they might be held though.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indicative of a system that really cares? Well, no, of course not. In line with that, the mental ill were being dumped off in droves. All we were doing was just prosting them in, taking them up to a bond hearing. And if the judge released them, they released him. If they put him in my custody, they put in my custody if they're mentally ill or not. It really didn't matter. I'm just supposed to hold people. And then I get an order to release them. Well, I knew that was wrong from the beginning. So I started, I hired mental health professionals at the entry point right when they're dumped off in the morning 300 a day. They're dumped off at the jail there for bond hearings to interview these folks, find out why they're there, what the issues are. And the amount of people with serious mental health issues, no one was watching it. No one was gauging it because it didn't fit into the nice, neat little formula. Why did anybody care? I mean, I'm not supposed to care. No one's supposed to care. And so the number was never being fully reported. The only number you'd ever hear is how many are in your custody. Well, you can.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, people come to the jail who have a diagnosed mental illness is probably close to 50%. The ones actually who sit in my custody is closer to about thirty-five percent, meaning that 15% of them are so are released on something so they don't come into my custody. They're dropped off for bond hearings, but I still see them. David, one of the points I've tried to make to people, if you think about it, government, what's the most oppressive, significant thing a government can do to its people? I'd say it's incarcerate them. Some people might say tax them, but I'd say incarcerate them. And to do that, then, you would suggest that for a government to do that, this has got to be something that is so scrupulously watched and monitored and engaged. No, I mean, start with the fact that up until, you know, five, six years ago, we had a DOS-based computer system that managed the jail. Tell me who's in the jail, how long did all the rest of this stuff.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I guess when I've looked at the system, I try to figure out, you know, where the issues are, the problems are, and where your pathway out of it is, I think one of the underlying problems is you're in these silos by nature. As a prosecutor, you're to prosecute the case is given you. As a public defender, you're trying to get your client the best deal. As a judge, you're supposed to be moving cases. But no one's overseeing the, I guess, bigger issue of is this justice? Is this person receiving justice? And that's where I think systems not necessarily set up to do that.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I probably was guilty of not giving it much thought. Yeah, I probably was. I don't want to say, oh, I was young, I was new. I'm, you know, not culpable. No, your thought as a prosecutor there to prosecute bad people. Some police department arrested this guy. You got the case. You know, let's move on. Did we have, and did I have particularly cases where I said, well, what's this case doing here? This case is probation or let's get this thing out of here. Yeah, but did I think about it the way I probably should have? Probably not. I mean, I don't think it was something that was put into the DNA of prosecutors per se. You know, you're giving your cases or presented to you and you move on them.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we don't care. I mean, there isn't any type of analysis done. I mean, there's like this Felton review, which is a screening process the prosecutors do, but that's for the most serious cases, you know, homicides, sexual assaults, things like that. It's just easy to arrest people and it's no cost to whatever police department arrest a person. It's not as if you're charged per arrest to have this person house. So you're not making any type of economic analysis that is this worthy of bringing someone into the criminal justice system. It's just, it's done naturally. And I saw it play out when I was when you were a...”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are usually the outliers, but I often tell people the scandal ones are the ones in the middle, the ones that are there for stealing a car. I mean, what do you need? I mean, it's a foreign prosecutor. What do you need to prove your case? Nothing. You need the vehicle title and the police officer pulled him over and said he was the one in the car. And yet those people clog up the system. We have people charged with retail theft as their most serious offense. The average time they spend in the jail waiting for disposition is 120 days. Retail theft. I mean, come on. They shouldn't even be in there in the first place more often than not.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And that's, once again, you would think, okay, we would have a criminal justice system, A, to deal with bad people, and B be for a purpose. So there'd be a determinant period of time that is scientifically analyzes the time period with the following type of programs attached to it to fix people. None of that goes on. None of it. It's warehousing people. Some get held longer than others. Some get released.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I mean, if literally you don't care, which is underlying my theory on this, if you don't care, well, then how long they're in doesn't really matter. What they do when they get out doesn't matter. All that stuff doesn't matter. And so the warehouse.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're going to throw you in a 4x8 cell with a complete stranger who has their own mental illness issues. We're going to leave you there for an indeterminate period of time.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, well, clearly, here I would hope society would jump up and down and say, we can't do this. I mean, these people are here only because of their illness. They are. I think people fall back on the fact that they said, well, Tom, they aren't just being swept up. They are interacting with the criminal justice system. They're committing a criminal act. And I even challenge them on that. It's not a criminal act. I mean, if someone is acutely psychotic having mental illness issues that you couldn't imagine and they're going into a store and stealing a bar of soap or something to eat for that matter, is that Professor Moriarty that is this master criminal? God knows. This is a manifestation of the fact that they're not getting proper treatment. They end up in the criminal justice system, and we are gladly there to sweep them up into it. And I often tell people, I go, take it to the next level. Are we sitting there saying, well, at least we have them here now, now we can fix them? Do you know any psychologist, psychiatrist in the right mind would say, you know, for your mental illness, here's what we're going to do.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reality of it is, I found myself over and over again talking with detainees at the jail where I honestly thought to myself that if that was my life I'd be sitting right next to him. And I don't consider myself a bad person. I don't consider myself inherently looking to do evil or anything. No. These folks aren't doing it either. But what has happened is that I think the criminal justice system has been contorted and so that the actual analysis of whether or not there's right and wrong going on here gets dispensed with and it becomes a very mechanical process instead where lives don't matter individual stories don't matter that that's just your lot in life you grew up in a bad part of the area there's no opportunities of course you're involved with dope dealing because that's how you can make money and so you get caught up in the criminal justice system that's just your lot in life and it's wrong and it's it's obviously wrong for that but i found it so stark when i was dealing with the mentally ill”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was because you know, it was so eye-opening because are we a segregated city? Yes, we are. And is that horrible? Yes, that's horrible. But those are the things that people, I think, acknowledge and see and they know that. What they don't see, though, is that there really are two different worlds here. And it'd be so easy. I tell people probably it's how a lot of people sleep at night if they even care to think about these issues. It's easier to sit there and say jails, prisons are all full of these bad, horrible, evil people. And that's what I found when I walked in there, and I sort of knew bits of it from my other dealings as a prosecutor and some of the other work I did in child welfare and things like that. But the jail was not filled with that, you know, 10, 20% of the jail were bad people, evil, how they got there don't know, but that the vast majority of the people there are good people who have made mistakes, poor judgment. But underlying it is”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the beginning, that I don't know how long we have this career, but why I'm there, we're going to push things, push them hard, and going to upset people, and that's going to be how life is. If people want to work with us, great, but I'm not going to sit there saying, oh, well, this is going to embarrass somebody or this is going to upset somebody. And so on all these different issues, it was a clear things needed to be done. And this office was unique in the sense that you could do them and do them immediately without having to get any type of authorization from some committee that may not even have an agenda.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of what I took away from there was things not to do. And I remember feeling just so, not just emasculated when you no longer can introduce bills, you couldn't amend your own bills, all that stuff, but it was just the notion that anything to get anything done, you need to have every star in a line. And it was so laborious. And at the end of the day, did you actually affect change? So at our office, I was adamant from the beginning that we're never going to have any element of that. We weren't going to have task forces. We weren't going to have committees. We're going to quickly identify problems, get solutions in place, and then tweak them as we go along. But we're not going to sit on the sidelines and be what I unfortunately see a lot of governmental officials do, which is they overstudy things, A, and B, they're too upset about upsetting other players in the system and don't want to embarrass them that they just pull back and they don't affect the change. And I made the decision.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, I mean, it was really a learning experience for me, whether it was that or whether it was in the eviction world where you hear about evictions and you think about, well, it's unfortunate someone didn't pay their mortgage. But when I was physically going out, which I still do not as much as I used to, but when you'd physically go out and see the realities of it, it's like, well, this is not right. And this is not what our society and our culture is about. And you're in a unique spot where you can change it. And so there was a big, as much as I had been around, it was in a limited capacity as chief of staff. It was when I first got in there that my eyes were really open where I found that the sheriff's office was really sort of at the hub of so many societal issues and ones that were not good either. And it was clear to me that I was in a unique spot where you could make change and make it quickly, which was also interesting too, David, is that I often tell people that I had some enjoyable years down in the legislature. I met my wife down there.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I came across the obvious parts of it, you know, that there's issues within the operations of jails and prisons throughout the country and that this one was no different. It had issues. And we went about just trying to really change attitudes and change some cultures and things like that. Mike Sheen had started some of it. I mean, we had a DOS-based computer system run in the whole place. You couldn't figure out who was in the place, let alone what they were in there for. And Mike had gone about getting that change as well. But then we went about sort of changing other aspects of it. And as it was doing it, it became clear to me that the real scandal wasn't necessarily the day-to-day operations. That was stuff that needed to be fixed, tuned, cameras put everywhere, things like that. But it was just what jails were becoming, which was just the repository for people that society didn't want to think about, for lack of.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Mike Sheen was the sheriff at the time and he'd been sheriff for I think 12 years at that point and I was there for about three years and it was in a somewhat really obtuse role because Mike had been in office for so long so people had their lanes and the like and I went in as chief as staff but I really didn't fulfill that role. I was more working on jail issues and jail overcrowding issues and so it was okay for about a year or so and then it was clear that I just wasn't able to get things done that I wanted to so I was actually looking to leave and had been looking at my wife's from downstate Illinois. We'd looked at even moving back where her family's at. And then Mike literally 11th hour decided not to run and I thought it was an office where I could really get a lot of things done. Nothing like what we've done. I didn't think we could do all this stuff, but I thought it could make a difference there.”
2015-12-03 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 14 - Sheriff Tom Dart · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source