Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart Named To Time 100
It may be a sign of the times that the two biggest issues on Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's plate are mortgage defaulters and prostitutes. Or maybe not.
In the life of a lawman, some things never change.
But for Dart, whose approach to dealing with defaulters has been to issue a moratorium on evictions and who is going after prostitutes by suing Craigslist, things look a little different.
On Friday, Dart was named to the 2009 Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. The local sheriff was included among "Leaders & Revolutionaries" like Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Obama.
When Time called to let him know last week, Dart was at home taking care of his wife, who is pregnant with their fifth child and on bed rest, and their four kids.
"I haven't had the time to read it," Dart told the Huffington Post. "My family life has been so crazy. I'm honored, personally, but it's one of those things that for the office means a lot. It validates all the aggressive action and time I've asked them to put in."
Last fall, as the economic downturn worsened and foreclosures skyrocketed, Dart initiated a moratorium on evicting renters when property owners fail to pay their mortgages.
"It was a bold move since the sheriff's duties specifically include the obligation to enforce writs of eviction," wrote Judge Abner Mikva in his piece on Dart for Time. "Not all the judges whose writs he was refusing to execute shared his sense of outrage, and some of the banks and others seeking to evict the occupants of the foreclosed properties threatened to hold him in contempt of court."
But Dart kept the moratorium anyway.
"I go out on a lot of foreclosures," Dart said, "and I was very troubled by what I was seeing. It was getting worse by the day, and I couldn't in good conscience be a part of something so unjust."
"It worked," wrote Mikva. "After a few weeks, the courts hammered out a plan with the sheriff. Before eviction writs can be enforced, it must be shown that the people to be evicted have been told why it is happening and given an opportunity to solve the problem."
The move made him an instant icon among renter's rights advocates and garnered the previously obscure county sheriff a big dose of national media attention.
"Foreclosures became much more of an issue because of the numbers," Dart said. "For years they were the problem of someone else. We didn't know them. Now it's everybody, everywhere."
Dart, 46, is a Chicago native. He graduated from Mt. Carmel High School and went to Providence College in Rhode Island before returning home for law school at Loyola.
In December 2006, Dart was sworn in as sheriff of the second-largest county in the country. The former Democratic State Representative lost a race for State Treasurer in 2002 and the man the Tribune described as "first an ambitious politician" is often mentioned as a potential candidate for offices like Illinois Attorney General and Cook County Board President.
Dart declined to say whether he was planning to run for higher office.
"I never look at things that way," Dart said. "As long as I'm making a difference, I don't care what office I'm in. I'll stay as long as I'm getting stuff done. I'm very happy with where I am right now."
In March, Dart sued Craigslist in federal court, arguing that the Web site's erotic services section was a "public nuisance."
"With Craigslist," Dart said, "the fact that so many people utilized it and were an educated population, when they saw how horribly it was being misused and how people were being abused, it touched a chord with people. And since we had done a lot of work on it, we had credibility."
The case is pending.
Since then, Dart has launched a prostitution intervention team to offer shelter, addiction counseling and financial assistance for arrested prostitutes to try and break the cycle that keeps many of them working the streets.
Dart's office recently kicked off a gang violence initiative in suburban Cook County, and he says he is in the process of honing a new strategy for pursuing child pornographers.
"The sheriff's office potential has never been fully tapped," Dart said. "There have been a lot of great sheriffs before me all over the country. But I think the envelope can be pushed a lot more."
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Huffington Post | Tim Taliaferro First Posted: 05- 1-09 08:30 PM | Updated: 06- 1-09 05:12 AM