Letter: Remove Cook County Judge From Criminal Court

This is former Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel's letter this week to Cook County Chief Judge Charles Beach:

I am writing to you in outrage over the conduct of Judge John Lyke and to demand his immediate removal from his criminal court assignment.

The reporting on Judge Lyke's courtroom is not a matter of interpretation; it is documented fact. This is a judge who routinely orders his own deputies to remove restraints from high-risk murder defendants, including the man who executed Chicago Police Officer Andres Vazquez Lasso in front of children, so those defendants can embrace their families in open court. This is a judge who has jailed sworn deputies at least two this month alone and at least six over the past two years – for the "crime" of following Sheriff's Office security protocol and hesitating before removing a murderer's handcuffs. This is a judge who screamed at deputies to leave a violent felon unsupervised in a jury room, overriding his own security detail's direct orders from their supervisors, and who told one deputy flatly: "If I were you, I would stop talking."

Let that sink in. A sitting judge intimidated a law enforcement officer into silence for raising a legitimate safety concern about a murder defendant. That is not judicial discretion. That is not "running his courtroom." That is a judge who has decided that his personal comfort with cop killers and violent felons matters more than the safety of the officers who protect his courtroom and the dignity of the victims' families forced to watch it happen.

I am not interested in euphemisms about "wide latitude." The Sheriff's Office has already said, on the record, that Judge Lyke's treatment of deputies "shows he has little concern for the challenges court deputies face" in protecting everyone in that room. When the people responsible for courtroom security tell you a judge is a liability, it is extremely concerning and needs to be addressed.

Judge Lyke has repeatedly, on the record, shown that he cannot be trusted to safeguard the safety of law enforcement officers or the integrity of criminal proceedings involving violent crime. Every day he remains assigned to a criminal courtroom is another day when the men and women who wear the badge, the same men and women whose colleagues have been murdered by defendants he coddles, are put at needless risk, and another day when the families of victims are forced to endure the spectacle of watching him extend comfort to the people who destroyed their lives.

I am asking you directly: remove Judge Lyke from criminal court immediately, refer his conduct toward Sheriff's Office personnel to formal review, and restore a courtroom culture that respects the officers who make it possible for that courtroom to operate.