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The following column runs the risk of making me look like an apologist for the mortgage lending industry, in particular the same treacherous folks who have been accused of using fraudulent court documents to foreclose on the homes of tens of thousands of Americans.

That's a no-win approach if there ever was one, which just goes to show why I'd make a lousy politician.

The politicians have figured out it's a can't-lose proposition to take up arms against these very same banks, which is why all 50 state attorneys general, including Illinois' Lisa Madigan, announced a joint investigation last week.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, an expected candidate for mayor, became the latest to jump on the bandwagon Tuesday, when for the second time in two years, he announced his office will temporarily stop carrying out some evictions stemming from mortgage foreclosures.

Dart said he is concerned by the national scandal that has exposed how some of the nation's biggest loan servicers were signing off on thousands of foreclosure affidavits without having personal knowledge of the facts and without verifying the underlying loan information.

"I can't possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can't say for sure everything was done properly," Dart told reporters.

Sheriff responds to theoretical problem

It's a nice populist position for Dart to take, and I can understand why he did it, but I'm going to try to explain why it's a meaningless action that will mainly serve to delay the inevitable in these cases.

The sheriff may find it ironic to discover me on the other side of this issue as we were very much in agreement the first time he halted foreclosure evictions. In fact, we both ended up being the honorees at the annual dinner of a community group that forced the subject to the nation's attention, the Albany Park Neighborhood Council.

At that time, though, the issue was very different. The sheriff was faced with actual victims: tenants who, through no fault of their own and sometimes without notice, were being evicted from apartment buildings in which the owner had lost the property through foreclosure. It made good common sense for Dart to refuse to kick people out of their homes until more equitable procedures could be put in place.

This time there are no known victims to which the sheriff can point. He's responding to a theoretical problem that the banks -- in their haste to push the unprecedented quantity of foreclosures through the court system -- might be unfairly seizing the wrong homes.

The sloppy, careless document processing by the banks is not theoretical. Some of the banks have admitted to it and temporarily stopped foreclosures while reviewing their procedures. It's kind of a basic legal principle that if you sign an affidavit attesting to certain facts you're supposed to have a basis for doing so.

Dart said he's in effect just telling the banks that before he will proceed with an eviction: "Let me know that you fixed it and everything's OK here."

Most homeowners just walk away

But as the sheriff is also aware, there's just no evidence of those paperwork problems resulting in someone unfairly losing their home here in Cook County.

Instead, what we find in our courts are people losing their properties for the simple reason that they failed to make the necessary mortgage payments. It's not as if somebody has discovered a bunch of court cases out there where the banks lied or made a mistake about the loans being delinquent.

In the vast majority of foreclosure cases, in fact, the owner/borrowers just walk away from the property. They don't even go to court to contest the foreclosure. There is no dispute about the fact they owe the money and aren't paying it.

What these banks did was stupid and negligent, perhaps criminal in some instances, and affected property owners are certainly within their legal rights to use these deficiencies as legal grounds to forestall or block a foreclosure.

The banks should be held accountable, and there's nothing improper about public officials forcing them to slow down and get it right.

But in the end, if the borrowers aren't repaying their loans, none of this is going to change the end result, and there's no sense in pretending otherwise.