Sheriff Dart defies the banks

Sheriff Tom Dart has the makings of a folk hero for our times: he is refusing to carry out evictions resulting from the mortgage foreclosures which have plunged America into crisis.

He might be on the opposite side of the law, but his stand is making him into a 21st Century version of Bonnie and Clyde, the Depression-era bank robbers who were cheered on by the unemployed and the newly-impoverished middle class because they offered a vicarious revenge. Now, as in the 1930s, the bankers are held to blame for hard times.

So the cheers were heard around the nation when Sheriff Dart stood before a microphone and declared: "We won't do the banks' work for them anymore." He also said: "We'll no longer be party to something that is so unjust. My job here as sheriff is not just to follow orders. It is to make sure justice is done."

Dart is the Sheriff of Cook County, which includes Chicago. A sheriff is elected in America, and Dart won the office in 2006 after 10 years as a congressman in the Illinois state capital.

He is a man in a suit rather than a uniform and cowboy hat, and he comes from the same Democratic political 'machine' as Barack Obama (left). But he is the first Democrat to strike up on behalf of those at the bottom of the financial crisis rubble.

Sharp-eyed commentators are already touting Dart, Chicago born and married with three children, as a potentially golden candidate for a new era of prolonged recession, while others question whether his motivation is personal ambition.

Dart explains simply that it is his office that gets the job of throwing families out of their homes on court-ordered eviction notices; 4,500 of them this year. Chicago's Cook County expects to see a record 43,000 mortgage foreclosures, compared to 18,916 last year as the financial crisis began. But it was an often overlooked detail that prompted Dart to order his deputies to stand down: one in three of the evicted families are tenants who have been paying their rent on time to landlords who default on mortgages. "They are the innocent victims here," says Dart.

Those responsible for their own mortgages also get a breather while the Sheriff finds himself playing an unlikely role in the local courts: he faces being found in contempt for refusing to carry out judges' orders, and may face impeachment. Dart has taken the initiative by starting talks with Judge Kinnaird of the county chancery court and Judge Nixon, head of the foreclosure section. He wants them to reform the eviction process, starting with a demand for lenders to warn tenants of impending foreclosures.

Not surprisingly, the bankers are furious. They accuse Dart of "vigilantism" and warn if they can't get their hands on the collateral, the homes, they'll stop making loans altogether. The Mortgage Bankers Association says Dart is placing "at risk the willingness of lenders to underwrite loans in Cook County". With hungry days ahead, the men in top hats should mind their words. Ordinary folk are going along with the Consumer Advocate organisation, which promptly anointed Dart a Consumer Advocate Hero. ·