Policing grows more dangerous as laws change and public sentiment shifts

Two Chicago police officers were shot April 25 inside Endeavor Health Swedish Hospital. One officer, 38-year-old John Bartholomew, was killed. The other, a 57-year-old, is fighting for his life. This happened inside a hospital during a routine prisoner transport. And once again, people in Illinois are acting shocked, as if this came out of nowhere.

It did not. This was predictable and preventable. The suspect’s history proves it.

The background of the man charged in the shootings, Alphanso Talley, is a case study in systemic failure.

The man has a long criminal record. He has been arrested multiple times going back to 2017; some arrests led to prison sentences. Still, he was released on electronic monitoring in December 2025 even though he had a history of failing to show up to court.

This is not an anomaly. The crime-reporting website CWB Chicago reports Talley is the fifth person charged this year, while on felony pretrial release, with killing or trying to kill someone in Chicago.

This is the justice system operating with a revolving door. A cycle of release without accountability. A structure that prioritizes second, third, fourth and fifth chances for offenders while police officers get no second chances.

National crisis

This is exactly what I warned about in an opinion essay for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2023. I wrote that Illinois and the nation were entering a dangerous era of lawlessness and collapsing accountability. I wrote that attacks on police officers were rising. I wrote that violent offenders were being cycled through the system with no meaningful consequences.

Nothing has changed. The numbers prove it.

The national picture is a crisis.

This year, as of April 1, more than 82 police officers nationwide have been shot, according to the National Fraternal Order of Police. Ambush attacks continue to rise, with offenders deliberately targeting officers without warning.

These are not random events. They are the direct result of a culture that has spent years undermining law enforcement and, in some cases, empowering offenders.

Being shot should never be considered part of the job. Being killed is not part of the job. No officer signs up to be executed in a hospital hallway by a repeat offender who should never have been on the street.

Why does this keep happening? Because the system continues to enable it by allowing the following:

1. Laws that restrict proactive policing and remove the tools officers need. Limits on proven tools — such as investigative stops, vehicle pursuits or discretionary enforcement — curb proactive policing. When statutes raise thresholds so high that officers can’t intervene until after a crime occurs, proactive work disappears.
2. The Illinois SAFE-T-Act reshaped pretrial detention and changed detention thresholds for violent offenders. It changed timelines for detention hearings, brought about tougher evidentiary requirements for prosecutors and added administrative burdens for police officers. 
3. The court system in Cook County has released people accused of attacking police. This happened recently in Orland Park, where a man accused of punching and kicking officers in the face was released with GPS monitoring.
4. Numerous electronic monitoring failures that endanger people. Violations sometimes don’t get enforced, or alerts aren’t acted on. High-risk offenders are sometimes placed on GPS monitoring rather than being detained, which was the case for the accused shooter at Swedish Hospital. 
5. Public rhetoric that paints officers as villains and criminals as victims.
6. Voices in the media that hammer law enforcement, fueling hostility and chaos. 

The human cost is unbearable. Officer John Bartholomew served for 10 years. The critically injured officer has served for 21 years. These are not statistics. These are fathers, husbands, partners, colleagues. Their families now face a lifetime of grief because the system that was supposed to protect them failed.

Nothing changes because no one in power confronts reality.

My 2023 opinion essay laid out the warning signs. It was headlined: “Attacks on police officers are rising. The lawlessness must end.” We are exactly where I feared we would be: more officers shot, more officers killed, more offenders emboldened and more communities destabilized.

Illinois cannot keep pretending this is normal. It cannot keep pretending this is acceptable. And it cannot keep pretending that weakening law enforcement somehow strengthens justice.

When you weaken law enforcement, you weaken public safety. The people who pay the price include the officers who run toward danger while many others debate talking points.

Tom Weitzel retired as chief of the Riverside Police Department in May 2020 after 37 years in law enforcement.