Reflecting on Progress: Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke Celebrates 15 Months of Leadership and Reform

CHICAGO (WLS) — The leading prosecutor in Cook County, Eileen O’Neill Burke, recently shared her insights with the I-Team, revealing that her judicial background initially left her unprepared for the political intricacies that accompany her current role. “I am a judge by nature,” she explained, acknowledging that navigating the political landscape is a significant aspect of her job.

As the head of the nation’s second-largest prosecutorial office, O’Neill Burke is dedicated to adhering strictly to legal principles, with a primary objective of ensuring that those who perpetrate violent crimes are kept off the streets. “Our decisions on charging and prosecution are grounded solely in the law and the facts,” she assured.

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O’Neill Burke also expressed pride in the positive shift in her office’s morale over the past year. “We have reversed the trend,” she noted, emphasizing the transition from widespread understaffing to having a waiting list of individuals eager to join her team.

She said she’s proud of the improvement in office morale over the past year.

“We have turned that around. We went from every single division being understaffed to now we have a waiting list of people who want to come work here,” said O’Neill Burke.

Specialized training to prosecute cybercrimes, crypto cases, hate crimes, animal cruelty and more has ramped up under her leadership.

O’Neill Burke says it’s the stream of domestic violence cases that keeps her up at night.

“That will continue to be a challenge until we get our domestic violence rates down to a level that we don’t see an increase,” O’Neill Burke told the I-Team. “We’re going to address it as we go forward and make sure our victims are not afraid to come to court and make sure our victims feel heard and supported and responded to. That’s why training is so vital, and that’s why we created a whole special bureau of those types of cases. Those are the two areas that we have seen an increase in violent crime, domestic violence, and CTA crime, and that is where we’re bringing our focus.”