Justice on the streets
Or call it “In the Nick of time.”
I heard about this from a friend who knows Judge Nicholas Ford personally. She said this is so like him.
A Cook County Circuit judge thwarted a break-in of his wife’s car outside his North Side home last night, eventually tackling one of the suspects and holding him until police arrived.
Judge Nicholas Ford, known around the courthouse as “Quick Nick” for his tough sentences, said this morning it took him a few seconds to realize the men rummaging through his wife’s car outside their home in the North Center neighborhood about 9:45 p.m. didn’t belong there.
After he yelled at the intruders, Ford said the two men bolted from the vehicle in opposite directions, with Ford taking off after one of them and tackling him…
“I had him down on the ground, saying, ‘I’m a judge! Just lay down, we’re going to wait for the police,’ ” Ford, 44, said this morning.
But some perps think there are different rules on the streets, like outrunning the law if you can.
The suspect continued to struggle, however, elbowing Ford in the head and neck and knocking the judge off him, Ford said.
As the suspect ran again, the judge gave chase while yelling to neighbors to call police.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m not gonna catch this guy,’ [but] I started gaining ground on him,” the judge said.
Ford again caught up to the 21-year-old suspect another block or two away, in front of his barber’s house, as it turned out, and a couple of neighbors helped hold the suspect until Chicago police officers arrived.
The WSJ law blog enjoyed this “lawyer turned superhero” tale, too. There may be a tv series in this.
