Most federal judges in Chicago are receiving home security systems as the U.S. Marshals Service seeks to better protect the judiciary following last year’s slayings of the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow, officials said.
The systems are part of broader security improvements for judges here, leaders of the Marshals Service said. Many of the improvements are being paid for with federal funds provided in the wake of the Lefkow tragedy.
Federal and local agencies are sharing information on those who surface as a security concern for judges, and they have increased efforts to investigate possible threats that emerge from judges’ daily work at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
Officials said they hope the changes will answer some of the complaints from critics of the marshals after the killings, including some judges. Lefkow’s husband and mother were shot in the Lefkows’ North Side home in February 2005 by Bart Ross, a litigant enraged at the judge. Lefkow had dismissed the medical malpractice suit Ross filed after cancer of the jaw left him disfigured. Nine days after the slayings, Ross killed himself, confessing to the murders in a suicide note.
Of the $12 million provided last year by Congress nationally for judicial security, more than 10 percent came to Chicago, said Michael J. Prout, chief deputy U.S. marshal in Chicago. “Almost all” of Chicago’s 65 federal judges have said they want a home security system, and they are being installed now. Systems have been offered across the country to 2,200 judges, Prout said.
“We are on target to make sure that everybody that wants them has them by the end of September,” Prout said.
The funds are being spent more than a year after Lefkow–who has not blamed marshals for what happened to her family–traveled to Washington to plead for more protection for the judiciary.
The Marshals Service entered into a $3.9 million contract last fall with ADT Security, only to have questions arise over who would pay some of the fees connected to the home equipment. Prout said the marshals and the Department of Justice have committed to pay for the monitoring, and the installations have gone ahead.
Outgoing U.S. District Chief Judge Charles Kocoras said the improvements have made judges at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse more comfortable, but there are likely lingering worries.
Expecting the unexpected
“Given the kind of job we have–we rule for people and we rule against people–there’s always the unexpected and the unknown that even the best security system would have trouble guarding against,” Kocoras said.
“Look at Bart Ross. Who would’ve thought he would go off in the way that he did?” the judge said. “People feel better, but the idea that we’re vulnerable is still in the recesses of everyone’s mind, given what we do.
“Those memories will not disappear, the memories of the Lefkow tragedy.”
Prout said the marshals met this year with every magistrate, district, bankruptcy and circuit judge in Chicago’s federal system, and a judicial security inspector met with each who wanted a home system.
“From there, we designed a system customized for their home,” Prout said, adding that what is being installed is not exactly what a consumer would get.
“We put in a few more bells and whistles, both in terms of response and monitoring,” he said.
Some of the other improvements now in place would better handle the kind of threat posed by someone like Ross, who ranted in court filings, and against judges and lawyers, in the months and years before he sneaked into the basement of the Lefkow home, officials said.
Ross was interviewed by the Illinois attorney general’s office in 1999, but federal agencies were unaware of that questioning when Ross became a threat to Lefkow several years later.
Now the marshals and other federal agencies, Chicago police and Cook County sheriff’s police are among about 20 organizations using an e-mail group to share information on anyone they come across who has inappropriate contact with any public official.
“We can quickly gain information on a person,” Prout said of the e-mail network. A county sheriff’s department may forward information on a threatening person at a local courthouse, he said, and it can give the marshals a chance to see whether that individual has a court date at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
The marshals also are creating a 24-hour center in Washington that will review threats involving the judiciary across the nation. Locally, three marshals are assigned as threat investigators in Chicago, checking out courthouse tips.
Investigations increase
In the 16 months since the Lefkow killings, marshals have investigated three times the number of potential threat cases as in 2004. Prout said he attributes that increase to more awareness among courthouse personnel.
Everyone from clerk’s employees to those who work in judges’ chambers has been asked to tip the Marshals Service to suspicious people or court filings.
“We tell them, `If it doesn’t sit right with you, if it’s a little weird, let us know,'” Prout said. “We try to figure out who this person is. What’s their deal?”
Officials declined to comment on other protection being offered to judges, including special security details and new courthouse equipment.
Kocoras said he believes the marshals are understaffed nationally, but he said the improvements in Chicago have led to a greater sense of safety and a better exchange of information.
“Locally, we get along very well,” he said. “They’re responsive to any particular request we have.”
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jcoen@tribune.com
