Man Gets Arrested 2X in One Day — While on Electronic Monitoring for Robbery Cases
CWBChicago, July 30, 2024
Anyone who needs an example of what’s wrong with the criminal justice and social service systems in Chicago should start their search with Sean Hill.
The 54-year-old, arrested by Chicago police 75 times since June 2015 and 12 times so far this year, is consistently described in CPD paperwork as having significant untreated mental health issues and hands that have been mangled by frostbite. Many of his arrests involve allegations of randomly battering people, usually downtown, and theft.
Sean Hill
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Most recently, cops arrested Hill for theft in the Gold Coast on July 25. Even though he was on electronic monitoring for four pending robbery charges and two felony counts of unlawful restraint, they released him from the Near North (18th) District police station a few hours later.
Within 90 minutes of walking out of the station, Hill got arrested in the Gold Coast again. That’s right. A man on electronic monitoring for six felony counts got arrested twice in under nine hours.
Also while on electronic monitoring last week, Hill allegedly spat on a 29-year-old Streeterville woman and, the next day, physically assaulted the same woman in a parking garage. A second woman also accused him of grabbing her at a Gold Coast bank.
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While Hill is frequently accused of battering strangers on the street, a crime that can be charged as a felony known as “aggravated battery in a public place,” he is almost always hit with misdemeanor battery charges instead.
One exception to that was in January 2023 when he attacked a Cook County sheriff’s investigator inside a River North parking garage, court records show. When the parking garage elevator doors opened at the lobby level, the woman saw debris strewn about the floor and Hill pacing back and forth, according to a CPD arrest report.
“You stupid b****,” he allegedly yelled before lunging and hitting her in the head with a metal trash can lid.
In September, he pleaded guilty to aggravated battery in a public place and received a sentence of 243 days served from Judge Aleksandra Gillespie.
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Two months after pleading guilty, Hill was charged with misdemeanor criminal damage to property in River North. Records show that he never showed up in court for that case, but prosecutors dropped it anyway in February.
He was arrested downtown three times in March: for two counts of misdemeanor battery on March 8, for which he eventually received 30 days time served, and shoplifting on March 12 and 19.
In the March 12 case, the manager of Foxtrot, 23 West Maple, reported that Hill stole wine in the morning, then returned and stole two more bottles later the same day. A patron who tried to stop him reported that Hill raised a wine bottle overhead and threatened to hit him with it, allegations that resulted in an additional charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
“Years ago,” a veteran of the county’s justice system said, “they’d be detained in [the jail hospital] awaiting a behavioral exam which took weeks to get. Not anymore. Revolving door.”
Prosecutors dropped all charges in both shoplifting cases on April 3.
Five days later, he got arrested again at a Near North Side Walgreens after allegedly shoplifting from the store twice on April 8. He allegedly took liquor, battery-powered toothbrushes, and other items the first time and two bottles of liquor the second time.
Hill allegedly told arresting officers that he planned to sell the merchandise on the street. The cops noted that Hill “does not have the suffice [sic] number of convictions for a felony upgrade.”
The officers were referring to a policy adopted by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx shortly after she took office in December 2016 in which shoplifters are only charged with felonies if the value of the stolen merchandise exceeds $1,000 or they have ten previous felony convictions.
Hill pleaded guilty on June 3, receiving a 100-day sentence from Judge Donald Panarese.
However, while the Walgreens case was pending, he managed to get arrested three more times:
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