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The crux of the national debate on criminal justice and police accountability reform is the ageless question: are the criminal justice system's documented mass incarceration, clear racial inequities and regularly recorded police abuse the product of a few bad apples, or is it a system that creates foundational incentives and guideposts to keep those injustices in place?

In Cook County, the answer is not either-or. It's both, and voters have an opportunity to get rid of one of those bad apples - Judge Michael Toomin. No judge is more emblematic of the judicial legitimization of police misconduct in Chicago than Toomin, the Presiding Judge of the Cook County Juvenile Court.

Recently, Cook County Democratic Party leaders displayed courage and conviction but also common sense in refusing to back the retention of Republican Judge Toomin.

Four decades ago when Toomin became a judge and made to it the Criminal Courts building at 26th and California, he used his station to protect the culture of racism and corrupt police conduct that permeated the building in the 1990s and 2000s.

In 2012, Toomin was tapped to head the county's Juvenile Court, a role that affords him great power and control as both a policymaker and supervisor over the other juvenile judges. The list of reformers' issues with Judge Toomin is long, including his refusal to allow the county to be part of Redeploy Illinois, a multimillion dollar statewide grant program that provides youth alternatives to incarceration, and his push to be allowed to jail 11- and 12-year-olds.

In November, every voter in Cook County has an opportunity to decide whether to acknowledge that the system treats young Black and Brown men with more suspicion and more punishment than all others. If voters reject this judge, they will send a clear message to the rest of the judiciary that enough is enough.

Brendan Shiller, President

Judicial Accountability Project