Kim Foxx reflects on her legacy as she prepares to step down as Cook County state’s attorney

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx defended her seven years in office Tuesday, saying she’s decided not to run for another term because she’s accomplished her goals and wants to make room for the next generation of leaders.

Foxx wouldn’t share her future plans after her term ends in 11 months.

“I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do next,” she told a meeting of the Leaders Network at the Columbus Park Refectory.

Foxx, 51, assured the crowd that “No one drove me out of this job.” She announced last April that she wouldn’t run for a third term.

Foxx framed her legacy in terms of her accomplishments: helping usher in the end of cash bail, overseeing the legalization of marijuana, increasing her office’s transparency by making prosecution data public and overturning more than 200 wrongful convictions.

“I had a job to do, a mission to serve, and I believe I accomplished that mission,” she said.

She boasted about shifting her office’s focus from low-level crimes to violent cases. When she took office in 2016, Foxx said her office’s most common charge was shoplifting. She raised the threshold for felony shoplifting from $300. Now her office’s most-charged offense is gun possession.

Foxx also addressed criticism that she was not hard enough on carjacking suspects. She said her office prosecuted 90% of carjacking cases brought to her office. The problem, she said, was that only 12 people were arrested for every 100 carjackings.

She said she’s proud of the direction she took the office, and wants her work understood in the historical context: She took office in 2016 after the police shooting of teen Laquan McDonald, during the city’s most violent year since the 1990s, when the public was looking for a top prosecutor who would hold police accountable.

“It’s really important that we understand the context for whomever comes next,” she said, alluding to the candidates for state’s attorney in the March primary: Eileen O’Neill Burke, a retired Illinois appellate court judge; and Clayton Harris III, a public policy professor and former political aide.

Foxx said violence will continue, no matter who is state’s attorney, until the city tackles longterm and widespread inequality and disinvestment in large parts of the city.

“When you cut people off from the resources they need to thrive, what you see is violence,” she said. Those neighborhoods need economic investment, mental health care services and educational opportunities, she said.

Foxx said she didn’t just make history as the first Black woman to be the county’s state’s attorney. She said she’s “an anomaly” because, “I’m from public housing.”

She reflected on her youth at the former Cabrini Green housing complex on Division Street, and how people with her upbringing are usually stuck within the criminal justice system, not leading it.

Foxx criticized the growing reliance on technology in law enforcement and Chicago’s gunshot detection system, known as ShotSpotter.

“People are so weary to call police that we created a technology” to alert police of shootings, she said. “Justice cannot be delivered by A.I. This is a people-powered endeavor.”

Foxx said the county’s next state’s attorney must continue to restore faith in the justice system by staying transparent, holding police accountable and continuing the work of overturning wrongful convictions.