Thomas J. Dart -- Cook County Sheriff

Short Bio (updated 5/5/09)

In just two years as Cook County Sheriff, Tom Dart has brought an aggressive, yetinnovative approach to law enforcement. A former prosecutor and state legislator,Sheriff Dart has long fought for the rights of others and protecting the most vulnerablemembers of our society.As a prosecutor, he helped initiate a massive public corruption investigation in thepoverty-stricken village of Ford Heights, which led to the indictments of multiple policeofficers.As a state legislator, Sheriff Dart sponsored hundreds of bills that demandedaccountability from state officials, while also showing a willingness to take on statebureaucracy. He re-wrote child welfare bills, wrote the state’s Sexually Violent PredatorsCommitment Act and led the state’s first-ever study connecting homelessness andprostitution.Since becoming Sheriff in 2006, he has introduced sweeping changes at the CookCounty Jail – the largest jail in the nation – and has also introduced the county’s firstanimal crimes unit, hoping to stop the spread of dogfighting. He created the county’sinternet sex crimes unit, which pursues child pornography and human trafficking cases,which provided the foundation for his federal lawsuit against the website Craigslist.He has also dramatically changed the way sheriff’s police handle arrests in prostitutioncases – steering prostitutes toward rehabilitative services instead of to jail, while alsodoing more to go after the men who pimp these women and buy their services.In May of 2009

Time

magazine named Sheriff Dart one of the 100 Most InfluentialPeople in the World, thanks to his groundbreaking changes to how the county handles