>> The Cook County Sheriff's Office is ending its decades old electronic monitoring program, giving the chief judge's office so responsibility for managing those cases.

Defendants ordered by a judge to be supervised with EM or GPS tracking will now be under the authority of the chief judge's adult probation department.

The change means the department will have to scale up its staff training and equipment.

But doesn't have enough support to do so.

Joining us to discuss the move is Timothy Evans, chief judge of the Cook County Circuit Court.

Judge, welcome back.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

Grant us a pleasure to be here with So proponents, including Sheriff Dart Cook County Board, President Toni Preckwinkle, who we heard from last evening.

They've said that for years, the electronic monitoring program should be consolidated under the courts that the courts are better able to run it.

What are your concerns with taking on a bigger case load and how much bigger might that case will be?

>> Well, it is true that we have manage the system much better than the sheriff's office.

And we've been doing this for 14 years.

We actually manage more people on electronic monitoring now than the sheriff that S so we'll be ready when to SUP 8.

Ing to answer your question directly that we will need approximately 150 more people.

But we are scaling that up.

>> Over 4 different tracks.

And we expect that by August.

We will have completed the first track we will be able to see whether our numbers are projections are accurate.

We anticipating that in about 6 months, we will have about 900 more people to keep an eye on.

And that's on average about 5 per day and 150 per month.

The first day it was.

35.

So I think of judges want to see how the system is going to work.

But as time goes on, I think we will be able to manage it very well.

And we a dual balancing process.

We have to presume that the accused are innocent.

At the same time that we have to protect the public.

And so as we move forward with that kind of an approach, I think that we can do that and we will be able to keep the public safe and we'll be able to get people an opportunity to.

Support their family to prepare for the defense to be able to pay their rent, pay the mortgage, using the system that we've been using for the last 14 years.

And you said 900 more in about 6 months.

But it sounds like there's there's the chance that it could be more than And I also want to be clear.

>> To our viewers, there were 2 parallel programs, one that was operated out of your office.

One that was operating out of the sheriff's Department.

The sheriff's department is that one is being phased out and those folks will instead be sent to the one that your office is already because this change took effect yesterday.

How have you all been preparing for this shift since the sheriff announced that things out late last year?

We've been working on it on a day by day basis with the sheriff with others who part of the system.

The.

>> president's office, the state's attorney, the public defender, all of them have been involved in this.

The clerk as well, trying to keep them abreast of our plans.

We project that between now and the end of this fiscal year, which is the end of November of this year.

We will need about 75 more Ft ease those are time employees.

And then after that between December of this year and April of next year will need another 75.

And that's with 150 from it.

And I think we will be able to manage with that.

The problem is that nobody knows what the future holds.

Our judges and not clairvoyant.

All they can do is use the evidence that comes in before them to decide whether somebody should be detained.

Pre-trial or free into the community pretrial.

And this electronic monitoring that we're describing is in between those 2 systems.

They are still.

Free, quote, unquote.

Their liberty is And look, let's get into that because Illinois network for pretrial Justice said in in a release this week that many people on the sheriffs electronic monitoring program faced.

>> Quote, arbitrary restrictions that led to losing their jobs being prevented from accessing medical care, going to the grocery store in the laundromat.

What would you say?

The differences between the program being operated through your office and the sheriffs hours?

>> Has always been more humane.

We permitted people to keep their jobs.

In most instances we permitted people to go to their doctor's appointment.

We permitted people to go to the grocery store to go church.

We were far more humane in the way we approach that and we will continue to do that.

But the judge can decide whether to keep somebody 24 7 or whether to give them a schedule that permits them to keep these services that I'm talking about.

Most of the time I judges permit the flexibility.

But we want to keep the public safe at the same time that we provide this humanitarian approach know, speaking of safety year offices that have the same jurisdiction as the sheriff, which the sheriff's office can arrest people.

So how is >> your department going to handle violators?

Well, violators to handle in 2 ways.

One, it's typical violation.

They simply didn't follow the court's order.

In those instances, we take the matter to court and we get a court order.

We change the order that initially MIA been applicable to that particular defendant.

But if they attempt to cut that bracelet off.

Something like that, that's closer to an attempt to escape and we can work with the sheriff and the other law enforcement officials.

2 take action immediately to prevent that person from leaving interest fixtures.

Just call the sheriff's department and they can just go and arrest that person or does that have to go through a judge who would then issue warrant it to go through a judge?

And we will be working with all of the parties that are involved in this, including the sheriff to see if we can make certain that we can expedite that process because I was going to be my next question.

If it takes a while for that whole process to play out, what does that mean for public safety Well, for example, we're going to be working with the state's attorney.

We have a new state's attorney.

We'd like the state's attorney to be notified and alerted when there's a violation.

At the same time that our office has alerted that there's a violation that would give them an opportunity.

As the person who represents the victims to work expeditiously to protect the public and we hope they will work with us to do that.

And to be clear, we did get a statement from the sheriff's office saying, quote, the Sheriff's office is committed to supporting the office of the chief judge in the operation of Air Electronic monitoring program by providing any law enforcement services.

It may need to ensure public safety going forward.

>> Let's before we're going to be calling on them to exit.

I'm sure you will.

Because Asian does, it does happen on occasion.

It does.

It does.

When the Cook County budget was passed back in November 6.3 million dollars was moved out of the sheriff's office to the adult probation Department for electronic monitoring.

How much is this transition going to cost you an is 66.3 million dollars.

Is that enough to get you started know it's clearly not enough.

And we've told the president's office and all the commission is that that's clearly not enough.

And that projecting, as I said earlier, that we're going to need 150 more fte.

And so you can't pay 150 FT ease with that small amount of money.

But that'll be enough to kind of get things going.

One of the big prizes that will have to make an adjustment on with to find a place to house these additional FT. the space that we have now at.

26 in California bursting at the seams.

So we're told that to the president's office and the commissioners and that's the kind of thing that this money is used for.

It's not all for salaries, but as for vehicles that we're going to need is for phones that we're going to need is for desk and furniture and all those things.

We want to be ready.

Want to protect the public and we want to recognize that these people are still presumed to be innocent when they're at the pretrial stage.

All right.

We'll have to leave it there.