It seems to me like we should be debating why all good people aren't permitted to protect themselves. I wonder how the people who live in Chicago and have to put up with an underfunded and demoralized police department feel about the city treasurer and clerk getting 24/7 bodyguards?
I challenge anyone to find a more corrupt state and local government then Illinois and Chicago on the North American continent.
Jeff
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUDGES_BODYGUARDS?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=US
I challenge anyone to find a more corrupt state and local government then Illinois and Chicago on the North American continent.
Jeff
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUDGES_BODYGUARDS?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=US
Mar 18, 1:57 PM EST
Judges lack protection politicians get
By NICOLE ZIEGLER DIZON
Associated Press Writer
CHICAGO (AP) -- When U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow discovered the bodies of her husband and mother in her home last month, she was alone - without bodyguards or a police officer keeping watch over her from a car nearby.
Yet every day, politicians, from governors and mayors down to California's school superintendent and Chicago's city treasurer, routinely travel with protection provided by the taxpayers.
It is a disparity that is getting more attention after the killings of Lefkow's family members by a man upset over a malpractice case and the recent shooting rampage that began in an Atlanta courthouse and left a judge and three others dead.
"I think the events of the past few weeks have kind of been a firebell waking people up that perhaps our security may not be adequate for our members of the judicial branch," said Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn, who has lobbied against bodyguards for lower-profile politicians. Quinn declined the bodyguards he is entitled to as a statewide elected official and said the money could be better used for judges.
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Right now, federal judges and other members of the bench generally get bodyguards only when there is a credible threat against them.
Lefkow, for example, had a U.S. Marshals detail assigned to her for about two weeks in 2003 around the time white supremacist Matt Hale was arrested for trying to have someone kill her. According to news reports, Lefkow and the Marshals Service agreed to drop the detail - and remove the surveillance cameras the agency installed at her home - after the threat seemed to subside.
Judges say that there is not enough money for bodyguards for everyone on the bench, but they say government can and should do more, from paying for home security systems to assigning psychologists to courthouses to identify people who might be dangerous.
Lefkow's husband and mother were shot to death by a man who had waged a decade-long legal battle against the doctors he said disfigured him during cancer surgery. He committed suicide last week.
On Tuesday, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body of the federal judiciary, asked the government for better security, particularly at judges' homes, and the money to pay for it.
"We have been concerned about off-site security ... and the Lefkow tragedy emphasized that very real concern," said Jane R. Roth, a federal appeals court judge in Delaware and head of the conference's committee on security.
Sheila M. Murphy, a former presiding judge in Chicago's Cook County, said she saw plenty of mentally disturbed people in her courtroom over the years. She recalled being rushed out of traffic court by security officers in 1989 when an elderly woman brought out a gun, wondering aloud why it had not been taken from her.
Courthouse security has improved since then, Murphy said, but little has been done for judges once they leave work. She said she would like to see psychologists at courthouses to screen people.
"We wouldn't have the budget to give every single judge security. Could we take care of judges where there's cause? Absolutely," Murphy said.
Bodyguards are only one of many ways to protect judges and other officials, said Gregory Boles, global director of threat management for risk consultant Kroll Inc.
Boles, a Los Angeles police veteran who formerly headed that department's threat management unit, said all law enforcement agencies should designate someone to assess threats to public officials. Those officials, in turn, should know how to protect themselves by keeping their addresses private and taking other precautions, he said.
In Lefkow's case, for example, her home address had been posted on a white supremacist Internet discussion group.
On Capitol Hill, the House speaker gets protection, along with the Senate president pro tem and other majority and minority leaders and whips. Cabinet members also are afforded personal security details.
Protection for just 42 federal executive branch officials - mostly Cabinet secretaries, agency heads and a few undersecretaries - cost the government $73.7 million from 1997 through 1999, according to a General Accounting Office report.
Many states provide police details only for their governors, while others, such as California, offer them to all executive officers. In Chicago, even the city treasurer and clerk get bodyguards.
Quinn said only the governor and big-city mayors should get automatic taxpayer-funded protection. "It should only be used where there is a genuine threat rather than as an enhancement to somebody's ego," he said.