Lake County State’s Attorney Eric Rinehart called for a “sustained urgency” in reducing violent crime and getting to the “root causes” after he was sworn into his second term in office.
Rinehart was officially sworn in, marking the start of his second term as Lake County state’s attorney, on Monday.
All Lake County assistant state’s attorneys and investigators also took their oaths.
Rinehart expressed gratitude to his family for their support and thanked his office’s employees for advancing the office’s mission, during a prepared speech following the ceremony.
“This mission is to make our community safer within a justice system that must be dedicated to truth, fairness, and compassion as it breathes life into democratically-passed laws and secures the constitutional rights that generations have fought to protect,” the state’s attorney said.
“While performing this solemn duty of bringing equal justice to every community, we must also strive to answer the question of why the most-resourced country in the world struggles with a crime problem?” Rinehart said.
The state’s attorney said many types of violent crimes are down in Lake County at a rate “much faster than the national or state averages.”
He said that crime clearance rates have risen because of new technology used in and outside of the office.
While saying that violent crime was down, Rinehart said that his office needs more funding to hire additional victim specialists to support domestic violence survivors, more prosecutors to decrease caseloads and more tools to counteract the opioid crisis.
“These steps will help us respond to the crime that happens right now,” he said.
The state’s attorney said prevention is “key” to the long-term health of the community.
“In other words, the best way to be hard on crime is to prevent it in the first place – to find those root causes and to treat them so that violent crimes do not take lives. By saving lives and reducing crime we reduce generational and community trauma,” Rinehart said.