Peoria Standard

State Rep. Tim Butler (R-Springfield) believes the state's Democratic polices are to blame for the large amount of police officers leaving the Chicago Police Department to find employment elsewhere. 

Butler shared an article from WGN-TV about the number of officers that have left CPD and expressed his thoughts about it in a Feb. 11 Facebook post. 

"This is what happens when the party which controls Illinois and controls Chicago makes 'defund the police' their top priority and when they pass laws like the SAFE-T which values criminals over cops," Butler wrote in the post. 

According to WGN-TV, the department has lost more than a thousand officers just in the last four years. Chicago currently has 11,845 police officers on its force, when as recently as 2018 more than 13,000 officers were on patrol. The drastic decline is draining the department. Last year, 264 veteran officers retired. 

“What you have in effect, there is 264 people last year who said basically: ‘I don’t see a future with the Chicago police department. I don’t see a future in the City of Chicago. I’m going elsewhere,’” Eugene Roy, retired chief of detectives, told WGN-TV. 

According to Chicago City Wire, Butler isn't the only legislator who is seeking the repeal of the Democratic-passed package of bills that eliminates cash bail by next year, allows people accused of certain crimes to be out of jail while awaiting trial, and imposes restrictions on law enforcement officers in the state including regulating the use of deadly force, establishing a new process to decertify abusive officers, and requiring body cameras. Rep. Brad Stephens (R-Rosemont) is one of them and in a January Facebook post, shared a petition to do just that.

"Crime is rising in Illinois, police officers are under attack, and Democrat policies are making the state less safe," Stephens wrote in the post. "It's time to show the men and women of law enforcement that we have their backs and repeal the SAFE-T Act in Illinois."

Rep. Keith Sommer (R-Morton) also supports repealing the SAFE-T Act, the McLean County Times reported.

In a post on his website, Sommer claimed the legislation was intended to appear as if it made Illinois families safer, but it hasn't been the case especially for those living in violence-prone neighborhoods. 

According to the McLean County Times, Rep. Patrick Windhorst (R-Harrisburg) is also for the repeal of the legislation.