We are facing a test and we are failing. Police and prosecutorial reformers across the country are watching us and Kim Foxx. They are watching the media attack her for the Jussie Smollett investigation and prosecution, watching the success of forces invested in taking down her mission and vision of reform. Across the country reformers like Kim Foxx are learning to be afraid.
Kim’s changing the conversation, bringing prosecutors into neighborhoods disinvested for generations and struggling with violent crime. These are communities, like Englewood, where residents almost never had an opportunity to meet anyone in the prosecutor’s office before, until they were introduced in court. They are meeting in person, before tragedies, so that police and prosecutors can more closely serve the residents of communities and the victims of the cycle of violence. Foxx is calling out racism in our police force directly when it shows its face, as well as when it is less transparent. And she is a role model for a kind of law enforcement professional who brings strength, humility, humanity, and intelligence to a field marred by inequality, anger, hatred, and pain.
