Stupid Crooks
Three types of criminals, all idiots.
“I did not rob a bank; if I had robbed a bank, everything would have been great… I tried to rob a bank is what happened, and they got me… I misspelled a note.”
— Virgil Starkwell, Take the Money and Run
When it comes to committing crime, (un)fortunately, not everyone is an expert… Or even a professional. A good caper usually takes the talent and skill of the likes of a Classy Cat-Burglar or even a Phantom Thief to pull off, and people either have a knack for that or don’t. Those who can’t pull off anything on that scale may think smaller, plan a less rewarding crime with fewer risks involved.
This trope is for those who fail even at that.
Criminals in general are seldom the brightest of folks in the first place, but there’s something about Stupid Crooks that always distinguishes them from the rest of the pack. Naturally, the very fact that they seek to commit acts of crime doesn’t win them any favors or admiration from anyone, but the fact that they can’t even succeed at it doesn’t do them any good, either. Knowing that, the escapades involving this type of criminal usually amount to one of the greatest forms of Comedic Sociopathy one can find anywhere.
When a Jerkass fails at something, it’s funny. When a Jerkass is also an idiot, it’s even more so.
Most commonly, Stupid Crooks are low-level burglars and petty thieves; other times, they may be people who don’t have criminal records or have never committed a crime before but are suddenly tempted to commit one for fast cash or some other small reward. No matter what though, these guys always get something wrong. They use Paper Thin Disguises (that don’t work), they rob a store that they visit daily where all the employees would recognize them, they use their real names to communicate with each other, they do all of those things at once, et cetera! Stupidity has no limits, and that has never been truer than in instances involving Stupid Crooks.
On most occasions, Failure Is the Only Option with the crook(s) either bungling a job that has low risk and is extremely petty (like taking candy from a baby) or one that comes with greater risk in a criminal field that they have no experience with. Stupid Crooks always get caught by the cops (even when Police Are Useless for anything else) or otherwise end up having a price to pay for their idiocy. In either instance, Amusing Injuries are very likely to occur.
The few times when a crook manages to get away with anything, the matter usually comes down to a Contrived Coincidence or two and a hefty dose of subversion that allows the crook to slip by when everyone else is preoccupied with a much larger mess that was made, especially true if the character isn’t actually after any plot-crucial MacGuffins and the character only serves to advance other circumstances of a story; in the very rare event that a Stupid Crook does get away with a plot-crucial MacGuffin by the end of the story, expect this to feel like an Ass Pull.
Often leads to Mugging the Monster and Bullying a Dragon. A Goldfish Poop Gang or a Bumbling Henchmen Duo is often composed of these. Weapon for Intimidation can show up in a subverted fashion where brandishing an unusable weapon (e.g. an unloaded gun) draws aggro from people who can fight back with greater force. For one reason or another, such characters are usually Too Dumb to Live. If any such character happens to draw sympathy from their failings, that character is also likely to be an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
Truth in Television, obviously, as shown by all too many real reports (or more recently, videos) featuring idiotic criminals failing in amusing ways. In Real Life, this is often exacerbated by drug abuse, which makes many criminals act even dumber than they are by default.
See also: Cut Lex Luthor a Check, when someone with a habit of committing crimes could actually achieve fortune and success through more honest and legal means. A Terrible Trio can commonly evoke this trope (or, at least, the supporting characters can, if the leader is halfway competent). Often The Family for the Whole Family is similar. Stupid Crooks can also be a type of Harmless Villain. If the crook fails because he is foolishly self-confident rather than technically stupid, see Too Clever by Half. This has nothing to do with The Perfect Crime, though sometimes the Stupid Crooks think that they are committing one (and are generally hilariously wrong). Sometimes they may be able to succeed because they are Too Dumb to Fool, but this is very rare (success because they are The Fool is more common).
Not directly related to Stupid Evil, although overlap is possible.
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Three types of criminals, all idiots.
“I did not rob a bank; if I had robbed a bank, everything would have been great… I tried to rob a bank is what happened, and they got me… I misspelled a note.”
— Virgil Starkwell, Take the Money and Run
When it comes to committing crime, (un)fortunately, not everyone is an expert… Or even a professional. A good caper usually takes the talent and skill of the likes of a Classy Cat-Burglar or even a Phantom Thief to pull off, and people either have a knack for that or don’t. Those who can’t pull off anything on that scale may think smaller, plan a less rewarding crime with fewer risks involved.
This trope is for those who fail even at that.
Criminals in general are seldom the brightest of folks in the first place, but there’s something about Stupid Crooks that always distinguishes them from the rest of the pack. Naturally, the very fact that they seek to commit acts of crime doesn’t win them any favors or admiration from anyone, but the fact that they can’t even succeed at it doesn’t do them any good, either. Knowing that, the escapades involving this type of criminal usually amount to one of the greatest forms of Comedic Sociopathy one can find anywhere.
When a Jerkass fails at something, it’s funny. When a Jerkass is also an idiot, it’s even more so.
Most commonly, Stupid Crooks are low-level burglars and petty thieves; other times, they may be people who don’t have criminal records or have never committed a crime before but are suddenly tempted to commit one for fast cash or some other small reward. No matter what though, these guys always get something wrong. They use Paper Thin Disguises (that don’t work), they rob a store that they visit daily where all the employees would recognize them, they use their real names to communicate with each other, they do all of those things at once, et cetera! Stupidity has no limits, and that has never been truer than in instances involving Stupid Crooks.
On most occasions, Failure Is the Only Option with the crook(s) either bungling a job that has low risk and is extremely petty (like taking candy from a baby) or one that comes with greater risk in a criminal field that they have no experience with. Stupid Crooks always get caught by the cops (even when Police Are Useless for anything else) or otherwise end up having a price to pay for their idiocy. In either instance, Amusing Injuries are very likely to occur.
The few times when a crook manages to get away with anything, the matter usually comes down to a Contrived Coincidence or two and a hefty dose of subversion that allows the crook to slip by when everyone else is preoccupied with a much larger mess that was made, especially true if the character isn’t actually after any plot-crucial MacGuffins and the character only serves to advance other circumstances of a story; in the very rare event that a Stupid Crook does get away with a plot-crucial MacGuffin by the end of the story, expect this to feel like an Ass Pull.
Often leads to Mugging the Monster and Bullying a Dragon. A Goldfish Poop Gang or a Bumbling Henchmen Duo is often composed of these. Weapon for Intimidation can show up in a subverted fashion where brandishing an unusable weapon (e.g. an unloaded gun) draws aggro from people who can fight back with greater force. For one reason or another, such characters are usually Too Dumb to Live. If any such character happens to draw sympathy from their failings, that character is also likely to be an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain.
Truth in Television, obviously, as shown by all too many real reports (or more recently, videos) featuring idiotic criminals failing in amusing ways. In Real Life, this is often exacerbated by drug abuse, which makes many criminals act even dumber than they are by default.
See also: Cut Lex Luthor a Check, when someone with a habit of committing crimes could actually achieve fortune and success through more honest and legal means. A Terrible Trio can commonly evoke this trope (or, at least, the supporting characters can, if the leader is halfway competent). Often The Family for the Whole Family is similar. Stupid Crooks can also be a type of Harmless Villain. If the crook fails because he is foolishly self-confident rather than technically stupid, see Too Clever by Half. This has nothing to do with The Perfect Crime, though sometimes the Stupid Crooks think that they are committing one (and are generally hilariously wrong). Sometimes they may be able to succeed because they are Too Dumb to Fool, but this is very rare (success because they are The Fool is more common).
Not directly related to Stupid Evil, although overlap is possible.
Chicago Inside Out
Forget the flashiness of city politics. Cook County has quietly become one of the best places in the nation for thinking creatively about the role of government in people’s lives.
Maya Dukmasova
October 2018
This is the fourth article in the series, “The Inequality Chronicles.”
If you’re a news reporter in Chicago, you get used to “the map.” Whether it’s unemployment, evictions, crime, police brutality, school closures, food deserts, or public health, the map looks the same. Sad and unjust things happen at higher rates in poor, black neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. The map shows that half of black census tracts are highly impoverished, compared with two percent of white areas; that nine in ten black and Latinx students attend schools with predominantly low-income peers; that people in West Garfield Park have a life expectancy sixteen years shorter than residents of the downtown Loop. 1 Many people are outraged by these facts, but almost no one is surprised. When the map shows up so often, in so many guises, you start to internalize its logic, and you become inured to the inequality it describes. 2
When the map shows up so often, in so many guises, you start to internalize its logic, and you become inured to the inequality it describes.
Here I want to trace a different sort of geography. Not where are the problems? But where are the people with the power and incentive to fix them? Experience says we shouldn’t look to Chicago’s elected officials. For most of the last century the mayor and aldermen were gatekeepers in a corrupt patronage system — the machine — which kept the schools and housing segregated and the wards racially divided. 3 The machine may not have the pull it used to, but the aldermen have no interest in redrawing that map. We can’t trust the institutions run by the mayor’s appointees, either. The Chicago Housing Authority’s “fix” for dilapidated public housing was to demolish 18,000 apartments and displace thousands of families, while building a seemingly indefinite waiting list for vouchers; Chicago Public Schools responded to declining enrollment in black neighborhoods by closing campuses rather than directing resources to the students who need them most; and the Chicago Police Department has an abysmal record of solving crimes and a long history of racial discrimination and brutality. 4
When a city’s public systems fail — when communities lose housing, schools, jobs, healthcare, and safe streets — a rift opens in the social fabric and people go into freefall. They sometimes land in the vicinity of Ogden and Damen Avenues, on Chicago’s Near West Side. Cook County Commissioner Larry Suffredin calls this area the “Bermuda Triangle” — a frank admission that some people will never make it out. At one corner is Stroger Hospital, a county facility which has the busiest emergency room in the Midwest. Chicago had more than 3,500 gunshot victims last year, and about 30 percent ended up at Stroger. The trauma center receives so many patients, with so many complex injuries, that Navy medics train here before entering combat. In fact, Stroger’s trauma surgeons have gotten so good they may be responsible for the city’s decline in homicides. 5
But, as Suffredin observes, not everyone survives. The dead are moved a couple blocks west to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. It’s a squat, beige, brutalist building, redeemed by an atrium skylight that casts an otherworldly glow on leafy tropical plants whose vitality is strangely comforting. Last year, for the first time, accidental deaths — mostly overdoses — surpassed deaths from natural causes among cases handled by the office. 6 The security guard plays the role of bereavement counselor, directing grief-stricken families to brochures with helpful resources.
At the third corner of this triangle is the Cook County Juvenile Center, which looks like a five-story crate, its plain white façade broken up by rows of horizontal windows. Behind those windows, on any given day, more than 200 children await trial, sentencing, or transfer to prison. Adults are held a couple miles down the road, in the nation’s largest single-site jail. The juvie building doubles as a muster point for deputy sheriffs who head out every morning in teams to evict a couple dozen families from their homes. 7
County officials don’t make decisions about Chicago’s housing, schools, or police; but they are the ones who enforce the evictions, process the criminal cases, and count the dead bodies.
It all ends up here somehow. The hospital, the morgue, the courts and jails: public buildings in the middle of Chicago but — here’s the crucial point — operated by the county. “Anything that other governments fail on, we’re expected to pick up,” Suffredin says. To understand the geography of inequality, then, you have to peel apart the jurisdictional layers. Look past the flashiness of Chicago politics and get to know Cook County government. It’s not boring! This is the second largest county in the nation. About half of its five million people live within Chicago city limits, the rest in suburbs that range from fabulously wealthy to virtually bankrupt. The county’s $5.2 billion budget is two-thirds the size of Chicago’s, and most of those funds are spent on public health and law enforcement. 8 That’s a tough mandate. County officials don’t make decisions about Chicago housing or schools, and they have no formal control over city police, but they are the ones who have to enforce the evictions and process the criminal cases and count the dead bodies.
Chicago’s a union town. The voters here are relatively liberal — they like to say they’re progressive, even — and they support a strong social safety net. 9 But the power to address inequality through public spending is undercut by obscure laws that force the county to pass a balanced budget while limiting its revenue. This is a huge problem that no one has found a way to deal with. In the decade since the last recession, the county has repeatedly faced annual budget shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Every year brings more cuts to staff and services. That’s not just a “structurally unsound” tax system, as the think tanks like to say; it’s a crisis. 10 Yet despite those fiscal handcuffs — because of them, even — Cook County has become one of the best places in the nation for thinking creatively about the role of government in people’s lives. Progressive reformers run several of the county agencies. Without the money (or the mandate) to build out social programs, they are trying to make public systems more fair and just with the tools they have at hand.
2418 W. Division St., West Town, Chicago
First let me take you to a cramped, windowless space on Chicago’s West Side, where five men wearing ankle bracelets arrive for group therapy at the Cook County Strength and Wellness Center. Established in 2016, this is an outpost of the sheriff’s office: three beige rooms, with mismatched furniture and awkwardly hung amateur nature paintings, which the county rents from the city for $1. A small staff provides job counseling, medical checkups, and therapy to defendants on pre-trial house arrest.
On a gray morning in early spring, Tony Gardner is attending group for the first time. 11 Like most people in the program, he’s facing a low-level drug charge. A couple of years ago, the county jail was dangerously overcrowded with defendants like Gardner, held for months (sometimes years) without trial on minor charges, simply because they couldn’t afford bail. Now, thanks to community pressure for bond reform, more people are being placed on house arrest. On any given day, there are more than 2,000 defendants in the county’s electronic monitoring program. 12 Charles Thompson, a professional counselor, runs groups and meets one-on-one with a couple dozen of them at the tiny Strength and Wellness Center.
Gardner admits he was skeptical when he got the invitation, but he was going stir-crazy at home so he decided to give it a shot. “I’ve been debating cutting this off,” he says, pointing to the ankle monitor. “I can’t feed my family, I can’t get movement. I came really, really close.” He turns to Thompson. “And then you called me,” he says, which “was mind-blowing because at least I’m gonna get out the house.” 13
Thompson has worked in correctional institutions for more than two decades. He’s a big guy with a relaxed manner and an easy smile. Leaning back in his chair, with his free ankle on his knee, he affirms Gardner’s frustration with the monitor. “Probably not a person in this room hasn’t thought about cutting it off,” he says. He reminds the men that they can get help applying for schools or jobs, and if they are successful, they can petition for more freedom of movement. A few minutes later, the men pull up their pant legs to compare the size of their own monitors. Thompson shares a bit of trivia, that the technology originated on Colorado livestock ranches. “So we cattle basically,” Gardner says. Another man chimes in: “Nah, the jail just got too crowded.”
After cuts to the city’s mental health programs, getting arrested is one of the few ways people from Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods can access the therapy they need.
The conversation flows naturally over the course of two hours. Some guys talk a lot and veer into personal stories; others are silent the whole time. Periodically, Thompson interjects a few words to prompt reflection, but he is careful not to be judgmental or prescriptive. He wants the men to feel at ease here, to feel that the space is for them, so that they’ll open up. “A lot of these guys don’t ever find a place to comfortably talk about their trauma,” he says. Many have suffered or witnessed physical or sexual violence. After major cuts to the city’s mental health programs, getting arrested is one of the few ways people from Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods can access the therapy they need. 14
One experience they all have in common is being harassed by police. “Everybody a gangbanger to them!” protests one of the younger men in the room. The oldest guy, a black man in his forties, says the police slapped him with a gang label decades ago, and he still can’t shake it off. Thompson, who is also black, builds solidarity by sharing his own experience; as a teenager, he was photographed and entered in a “gang book” by police in a nearby suburb. 15 But he is careful not to encourage fatalism. “There isn’t a person in this room that when I called you didn’t say ‘the system is fucked up,’” he says. “The huge thing is changing what you can control.”
Around noon, the conversation is broken up by the arrival of a familiar face, a man who likes to come to group even though he’s no longer on house arrest. He’s just finished a shift at the city’s animal shelter, where he works six days a week for $12 an hour. Some of the guys want to know more about the job. “All you’re doing is cleaning up after the dogs and feeding them,” he grins. “Simple.” He likes working the early shift and having the rest of the day to himself, but now he’s eyeing a better-paying job with the Chicago Transit Authority.
Thompson laments that it’s hard to get reliable information about job placement programs for people with criminal records. County staff don’t talk much about city programs, and the city doesn’t advertise that the waiting list for good jobs can be a thousand people long. The state has re-entry specialists that can hook up ex-offenders with federal bonds that function like insurance for employers, but few people know about it. 16 “You kind of wind up working through it blindly,” Thompson says, “researching a lot of things yourself.” He’s been around long enough to have a “personal rolodex” of resources he can share with clients — but if he leaves this job, that knowledge will go with him.
So even this small patch of safety net is fragile. The county’s two wellness centers are open only part-time, and the staff can reach just a small number of people cycling through the system. “From what we hear there’s going to be some more cuts” to the sheriff’s budget, Thompson confides. “I hope they don’t close the center down. Sometimes I get a sense we might not be here.”
1401 Maybrook Dr., Maywood, Illinois
For Sheriff Tom Dart, there’s a bigger agenda. When we meet, he’s keen to share stories about what he’s doing to help the “hollowed out” black communities in southern Cook County. He’s building a baseball field, he’s demolishing abandoned homes, he’s dealing with water management. His lawyers are helping small towns write their ordinances. More than two dozen of Cook County’s smaller municipalities are on the brink of financial ruin, with a tax base so thin that they’re underwater on their pension obligations; some can no longer afford basic public services. 17 Dart picks up their policing, naturally, but he also gets involved in economic development. Maybe it’s not in the sheriff’s job description, he says, but “if you’re going to address crime issues and not address the economics, then you’re a fool.”
Maybe it’s not in his job description, says the Sheriff. But ‘if you’re going to address crime issues and not address the economics, then you’re a fool.’
Dart is famous for talking like this. When he was elected in 2007, the Cook County Jail had been under federal monitoring for nearly four decades and had been sued repeatedly for violating inmates’ constitutional rights. Over the last ten years, the sheriff cleaned things up enough to end federal oversight (with help and pressure from other public officials and community groups). 18 Along the way, he’s cultivated a national reputation as a progressive reformer, a sort of anti-Joe Arpaio. When the foreclosure crisis hit, Dart refused to enforce evictions. He spoke out against the criminalization of mental illness, installed a psychologist as the head of the jail, and transformed an old boot camp into a mental health, job training, and education facility. He offered mental health screening to every defendant in central bond court, to help public defenders make a stronger case for their clients’ pre-trial release. His office gives out cell phones to seniors and naloxone to drug users, runs a prescription pill disposal program, and provides recycling services. And he’s always angling to do more. His “Justice Institute” collects data on judicial decisions and develops policy proposals, spinning off ideas for new programs. 19
It’s effective, but controversial. Some people see this work as a progressive interpretation of the sheriff’s mandate to uphold public safety. Others see it as inappropriate meddling in business that isn’t his. “I actually get pushback from the county board on a regular basis,” Dart says. He switches to a petulant whine, mimicking the commissioners: “‘Well, that’s not really your job.’ And I’m always like, ‘Well, who else will do it’?” At 55, he has spent almost his entire adult life in public office; he was a state legislator before he ran for sheriff. His demeanor is unexpectedly informal, and his rambling, unscripted speech is punctuated by sighs, eye rolling, and sarcastic asides. Instead of a tie, he accessorizes with colorful bracelets woven by his five kids. But he’s a shrewd political operator. Dart sidesteps perennial rumors that he’ll run for mayor with dad-speak: “If the last office I’ve ever held is this one, I’m a happy, happy camper.”
His biggest frustration is the lack of cooperation between the city and county. In his first term, Dart worked closely with the former Chicago mayor, Richard M. Daley. But Rahm Emanuel, he says, “never calls.” Dart’s still fuming about Chicago’s decision to shut down six of its twelve mental health clinics in 2012. 20 For years afterward, he kept a pie chart on the front page of his website showing the share of people in his custody who self-reported mental illness. It was usually at least a third of the jail population.
Dart also wishes the city would invest in more public and affordable housing. He echoes a belief you hear often in lower-income Chicago neighborhoods and in southern Cook County, that the demolition of the city’s housing projects, starting in 2000, sent thousands of poor people and their problems into communities that already had enough of their own. Which is partly true: under the Plan for Transformation, the CHA privatized much of the public housing supply. The number of households with vouchers doubled from 25,000 to 48,000, and those families overwhelmingly live in the poorest, most segregated neighborhoods. 21 Yet there’s not much evidence for the theory that the displacement of public housing residents is driving crime, or that it accounts for the exodus of poor families out of Chicago. Alden Loury, a journalist and demographer, says high unemployment in distressed communities and generally high housing costs are far more important causes of outmigration. 22
Like most county officials, Dart complains that his office is unduly burdened by the fallout of failed city policies. He’s tried to fill the gaps by creatively interpreting the sheriff’s role, but now he has to figure out a way to do it with less money. Last year his budget was slashed by $60 million — about a tenth of his operating funds — to help close the county’s deficit. As the jail population dropped to a 15-year low, commissioners argued that the sheriff’s staff should be downsized accordingly. 23 Dart says that’s backwards; that his office is being penalized for its successes. Just because bond reform led to fewer people in jail doesn’t mean the case for public safety is any smaller. Well-staffed jails are safer jails, and more people on electronic monitoring means a greater need for programs like the Strength and Wellness Center.
“What these folks on the county board did to me,” Dart says, “there was no thought, there was no plan — which is not unusual.” Then he decides that folks is too kind a word for the commissioners: “There was a constant refrain from some of these idiots on the county board: ‘With your population down, why isn’t your head count down?’”
4926 W. Cermak Rd., Cicero, Illinois
Last December, four of those county commissioners assembled before a cadre of reporters to celebrate their victory in a short-lived tax war — a story almost too silly to recount, except for its outsize effect on Cook County’s future. A year earlier, facing a $174 million budget shortfall, the county board had narrowly passed a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages, which was projected to close the gap and stabilize county finances for three years. Board President Toni Preckwinkle offered a dual rationale: “I make no apologies for this. I think it’s an effective way to raise revenues, and it has real good health consequences.” But public opinion quickly soured. First a lawsuit delayed implementation; then Big Soda teamed up with outraged consumers and aggrieved small business to lobby commissioners for repeal. Two months after the tax took effect, the board reversed itself and voted 15-2 to strike it down. 24
Lobbyists and politicians gathered to celebrate the soda tax repeal: ‘We’re gonna party like it’s 1933. It is the end of our own Prohibition!’
Which is how I ended up at a press conference at Supermercado La Chiquita, in the near-west suburb of Cicero, a few blocks from the Chicago city limits. Martin Sandoval, the owner of the small grocery chain, wore a striped rugby shirt and jeans as he spoke in front of a fully stocked shelf of soda, juices, and energy drinks. A sign taped to the podium read, “Cook County Open for Business.” He thanked the commissioners for repealing the tax, which he faulted for months of depressed sales. Then the politicians and lobbyists took over the mic.
“Today represents Independence Day,” declared county commissioner Richard Boykin, who was running for re-election in a district that spans impoverished areas of Chicago’s black West Side and middle-class suburbs north of Cicero. Boykin opposed the tax as a regressive measure that would hurt his constituents (and, not incidentally, the soda lobbyists who donated to his campaign). The “people,” he said, in a deliberate, somewhat pedantic tone, “rose up to defy taxation without representation.” He described the tax as an unfair burden on working families and small businesses. Then he proceeded to call out each lobby in turn: “I’m proud to stand with my colleagues, people in the restaurant industry, and the grocery industry, and the food industry, and say to the people: Happy Independence Day!”
Sam Toia, the head of the Illinois Restaurant Association, went for a different historical analogy. “Today we’re gonna party like it’s 1933,” he said. “It is the end of our own Prohibition!” He asked everyone in the audience to grab a sweetened beverage and raise it high. “Power to the people! Let’s toast the restaurants, retailers, vendors, and employees who spoke up and fought for their customers. Let’s toast to the eight commissioners who were with us since day one, and the seven others who listened to the people of Cook County and changed their vote.” Echoing the sign on the podium, he said, “Cook County indeed is open for business. Cheers!” Then, after a tepid response: “C’mon, let’s hear it, cheers!”
If the toast flopped, it may have been because the air was filled with reporters’ questions about the lost revenue. The tax repeal blew a $220 million hole in the budget, which Preckwinkle planned to fill by laying off 300 employees, eliminating 1,000 vacant positions (out of a 22,000-person workforce), and imposing mandatory furloughs across the agencies. She anticipated cuts to worthy programs like mortgage foreclosure mediation and drug school, which diverted people charged with narcotics possession out of the criminal justice system. 25
For his part, Boykin welcomed the fiscal austerity, which he said reflected “the success that we’ve had in criminal justice reform.” 26 But there was a circular logic to his claim. Just the day before this exuberant celebration of free soda refills, Chief Judge Timothy Evans had sued the county, claiming that layoffs in his office would make it hard to maintain the programs that kept people out of pre-trial detention. 27
As the presser fizzled out, I spoke directly with Boykin. “Anybody who suggests that you can’t shed folk in county government is not being honest,” he told me. Then he paused to cheese with the other commissioners and lobbyists — “let me just get in this picture” — before returning to his talking point. “You have to make sure that every person in county government is [performing] an essential function for the taxpayers,” he said. “Otherwise it just becomes a charity kind of situation.” Boykin favored privatization and outsourcing of county services. He even floated the idea of selling the hospital system’s $170 million outstanding debt for $20 or $30 million. That’s equivalent to less than two months of soda tax revenue, and it would mean aggressive debt collectors going after patients too poor to pay their medical bills. 28
As we parted ways, he gave me his card and a firm handshake, then asked in a low voice: “Did you like my Independence Day thing? Happy Independence Day?” He lost his bid for re-election a few months later.
