The City Club of Chicago recently held a virtual forum with Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart about his life and efforts in fighting social injustice and bringing protection to all citizens.
Once he became sheriff, he worked to bring change to many Chicago neighborhoods, Dart told the City Club of Chicago. For instance, on the city's West Side, the sheriff's department created a community model in which the officers performed community cleanup, hosted barbecues and established board game tournaments for kids at the local library. Since the initiative began, they've experienced a 34% decrease in shootings and 35% decrease in homicides.
"We're talking with the community," Dart told the City Club. "We're on bikes where people stop us all the time and talk to us about different things. So there's a real, incredible engagement that we do out there that's just different. It's showing really positive results and we've taken it into the local schools where we do programs within the schools that are connected with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and Boy Scouts of America."
Because traditional absentee voting is not available for the incarcerated, Dart set up actual polling stations inside the jail for those who are allowed to vote. "For the first time ever in the country, maybe they do this elsewhere in the world, but...detainees vote in the jail," Dart told the City Club.
But Dart did not just want absentee voting, he wanted civics programs so that the men and women could learn and know more about government and be truly educated voters.
"The kicker was that our turnout was just under 40%," Dart told the City Club, noting that the percentage was better than public voter turnout outside the jail.
Since becoming sheriff in 2006, Dart has advocated for many vulnerable and neglected communities. He was honored as one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world in 2009 and was also named public official of the year by Governing magazine in 2017.
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