Michael Matthews was sleeping in his brother's basement early one November morning. He had no idea the Cook County sheriff's office thought he was somewhere else — and that he would soon be sent to jail for it.
At the time, Matthews, a former city employee and father of six, was among the 2,500 people in Cook County awaiting trial on the sheriff’s electronic monitoring program. Electronic monitoring is a system through which the Cook County sheriff’s office tracks people awaiting trial using a GPS-based ankle bracelet.
Matthews faces seven charges, including murder, in connection with a shooting outside of a River North nightclub in 2019. He has never been convicted of a crime. Prior to his arrest, he lived in North Lawndale with his family and operated a nonprofit called Endless Energy Sports that taught kids basketball as a means to stay out of trouble.
After allegations of Matthews tampering with his ankle monitor, his brother, Walter, decided to take matters into his own hands. In the county’s electronic monitoring program administered by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office, defendants wear an ankle monitor equipped with GPS and cellular tower tracking technology which alerts authorities when its wearer moves outside of their permitted boundary.
One alleged violation, on Nov. 9, during which Matthews is captured on home video footage on his laptop, places him darting between his brother’s home, neighboring addresses and houses across the subdivision between 1:33 and 1:46 a.m. Track Group, the company contracted by Cook County to provide ankle bracelets and examine alerts from the devices, has provided these devices to Cook County since 2017. Their products are marketed as a “reliable location tracking device,” as stated on their website. Track Group declined to comment, deferring to the Cook County sheriff’s office.
“For a brief second, it was acknowledged to be a lower quality, because it went from high to medium, it drifts,” Follet said.