Editorial: Cook County’s electronic monitoring system is putting people in danger. Fix it now.

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When we learned that the man who allegedly set 26-year-old Bethany MaGee on fire on a Blue Line train last month not only had been arrested more than 70 times but was also out on electronic monitoring after assaulting a social worker at MacNeal Hospital — in spite of the Cook County state’s attorney’s request that he be held — we were alarmed. That man, Lawrence Reed, had violated his electronic monitoring terms multiple times prior to the attack.

Given the shocking, high-profile nature of this story, you might be tempted to believe it an anomaly.

It is not.

In June, Chicagoan Arturo De La Mora was sentenced to 52 years in prison for murdering his girlfriend while he was on electronic monitoring for a prior felony gun case, crime news