What Tom Dart wants you to know

Sheriff Tom Dart Biography

 

 

As Cook County Sheriff, Tom Dart has brought an aggressive, yet innovative approach to law enforcement. A former prosecutor and state legislator, Sheriff Dart has long fought for the rights of others and protecting the most vulnerable members of our society.As a prosecutor, he helped initiate a massive public corruption investigation in the poverty-stricken village of Ford Heights, which led to the indictments of multiple police officers.

As a state legislator, Sheriff Dart sponsored hundreds of bills that demanded accountability from state officials, while also showing a willingness to take on state bureaucracy. He re-wrote child welfare bills, wrote the state’s Sexually Violent Predators Commitment Act and led the state’s first-ever study connecting homelessness and prostitution.

Since becoming Sheriff in 2006, he has introduced sweeping changes at the Cook County Jail – now the second largest jail in the nation after Dart’s efforts to eliminate jail overcrowding – and has aggressively re-structured the Sheriff’s Police force.

Assigning specialized gang units has curbed suburban gang activity through their focus on aggressive regional tactical work, backing up smaller suburban police departments unable to handle the crime rates on their own. He also created the county’s first animal crimes unit, which works diligently to stop the spread of dogfighting and animal cruelty. The internet sex crimes unit, also founded under Dart, pursues child pornography and human trafficking cases, providing the foundation for his federal lawsuit against the website Craigslist, which ultimately led to the removal of the Adult Services section from their website.

He has also dramatically changed the way sheriff’s police handle arrests in prostitution cases – steering prostitutes toward rehabilitative services instead of to jail, while also doing more to go after the men who pimp these women and buy their services.

Sheriff Dart also worked to significantly change the county’s approach to evicting families in foreclosure – ensuring they have received proper notice before being put out on the street, and refusing to evict after banks admitted to robo-signing foreclosure documents.

In 2009, Time magazine named Sheriff Dart one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, thanks to his groundbreaking efforts.

He and his wife Patricia live on Chicago’s South Side and are the proud parents of 5 young children.