Federal agents will be sent to deal with violence spikes
CHICAGO – President Donald Trump, who once insisted Chicago’s crime problem could be solved within a week, announced plans Wednesday to send a “surge of federal law enforcement” to the city to address ongoing violence.
Though agents also will be sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and could eventually be seen in New York and Philadelphia and other locations, Trump singled out Chicago as being in the most critical need of additional resources.
“Perhaps no citizens have suffered more from the menace of violent crime than the wonderful people of Chicago, a city I know very well,” Trump said.
Attorney General William Barr said hundreds of federal agents could take part in the surge in the city, where they will be engaged in “classic crime-fighting” such as investigating homicides, gangs, gun crime and drugtrafficking organizations. The new agents will include members of the
FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.
The president called Chicago Mayor Lori
Lightfoot after his news conference to reiterate his plan. Lightfoot described the call as “brief and straightforward” in a statement, despite the rancor that has defined their social media exchanges in recent months.
The mayor offered a measured response to the announcement, expressing both cautious optimism about the additional resources and skepticism about Trump’s motives. She has repeatedly said the kind of force captured on camera on the streets of Portland,
Oregon, is not welcome in Chicago.
“If those agents are here to actually work in partnership and support of gun violence and violent cases, plugging into existing infrastructure of federal agents, not trying to play police in our streets, then that’s something different,” Lightfoot said, “but the proof is going to be in the pudding.”
Officials were quick to point out the difference between the Chicago surge and the situation in Portland, where unidentified agents have been arresting protesters for allegedly vandalizing a federal building and taking them away in unmarked cars. The Chicago effort will focus more on helping local police deal with the increase in neighborhood violence, they said.
“In Chicago, we see an unprecedented rise in crime against fellow citizens,” said Chad Wolf, acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. “The DHS mission in Portland is to protect federal property and our law enforcement officers. In Chicago, the mission to protect the public from violent crime on the streets.”
For Lightfoot, the prospect of increased federal assistance for anticrime efforts is a thorny proposition. More federal agents could help with the city’s skyrocketing violence, but the unfolding controversy in Portland and Trump’s repeated harsh rhetoric toward Chicago has led to high public mistrust in the federal government, which both she and Gov. J.B. Pritzker acknowledged.
“We know the ATF, FBI,
DEA are coming to and are in Chicago engaged in activities to help local law enforcement ... that seems like legitimate activity to go after criminal enterprise,” Pritzker said. “But it’s this other thing that’s going on where people are wearing camouflage uniforms with no identification about who they are, claiming to be protecting federal buildings ... that is not something that is acceptable in the state of Illinois or city of Chicago.”
The Trump announcement comes a day after a mass shooting outside a South Side funeral home in which 15 people were injured. The city has experienced one of its most violent summers in recent memory with
414 homicides this year compared to 275 at the same time last year, official Chicago Police Department statistics show, a 51% increase.
Among the homicide victims discussed by Trump at the news conference was 14-year-old Vernado Jones Jr., who was one of four people killed in a shooting in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood on July
4. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest of the people involved in his killing.