During a press briefing on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he would be sending a “surge” of federal law enforcement agents to Chicago after their local leadership has failed to stop the massive surge of crime and murder in the city.
“No mother should ever have to cradle her dead child in her arms simply because politicians refused to do what is necessary to secure their neighborhood and to secure their city,” President Trump said during the press briefing.
The President announced that agents would be sent to multiple cities to diminish the “heinous crimes of violence.”
“We’ll work every single day to restore public safety, protect our nation’s children and bring violent perpetrators to justice,” he said. “We’ve been doing it and you’ve been seeing what’s happening all around the country.”
“We’ve just started this process and frankly we have no choice but to get involved,” President Trump added.
Check out what CNN reported:
Speaking at the same event as Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr criticized what he called “extreme reactions that have demonized police” in the wake of Floyd’s killing, which he blamed for “a significant increase in violent crime in many cities.”
Trump was announcing the expansion of the Operation Legend initiative, a Justice Department program first established in Kansas City earlier this month that utilizes federal law enforcement officers from the FBI, US Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to combat violent crime.
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Barr said there were about 200 federal agents dispatched as part of the program to Kansas City, and said a comparable number would head to Chicago to augment existing teams already there.
He said 35 agents would go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and that other cities would be added later.
The program is named for 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, a Kansas City resident who was fatally shot while sleeping at home.
When it was announced, the Justice Department described the initiative as “a sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative across all federal law enforcement agencies working in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials to fight the sudden surge of violent crime.”
The program doesn’t require the explicit invitation from local leaders, and many have resisted having federal officers patrolling their streets.
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