Chicago — Prosecutors say a man who was on electronic monitoring for allegedly carjacking a woman in the parking lot of the Lincoln Park Menard’s store had a loaded handgun next to him while he was on “essential movement,” a provision of the SAFE-T Act that allows people on ankle monitors to leave their homes at least two days a week to complete “essential” activities.
“The defendant was using that essential movement day to be in a car with multiple people where there is cannabis being smoked, and this defendant was in possession of a loaded firearm,” Judge Barabara Dawkins recounted before holding Freddrick Jackson, 19, without bail.
This week’s hearing was the second time Jackson appeared in Dawkins’ courtroom for a felony bail matter.
Last June, prosecutors told Dawkins that Jackson, a juvenile, and a woman hid in a shopping cart corral on the Menard’s parking lot and carjacked a woman at gunpoint of her BMW three months earlier.
At the end of the June hearing, Dawkins ordered Jackson to pay a $15,000 deposit toward bail to go home on electronic monitoring. His mother put up the cash on October 3, and he was released on an ankle monitor, according to court records.
Everything went swimmingly for almost exactly three months until Chicago police saw a car traveling in South Chicago with expired Minnesota license plates around 12:30 p.m. Monday.
Officers pulled the car over, smelled burnt cannabis, and asked the occupants to step out, according to a CPD arrest report. In the back seat, where Jackson was sitting alone, officers found a loaded 9-millimeter handgun under a winter coat, the report said.
The cops released the driver with the vehicle and arrested Jackson on a felony charge of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.
Illinois’ massive 2020 criminal justice bill, called the SAFE-T Act, requires electronic monitoring participants to receive two 8-hour periods on at least two days to move freely outside their homes.
Last April, the Sun-Times editorial board urged the state to end “essential movement” for people accused of violent crimes. That has not happened.
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