Operation Legend’s legacy remains in city
24 agents from Trump’s program still on the job
The Trump administration sent a surge of federal agents into Memphis and other cities in the summer of 2020 and called the effort Operation Legend. The anti-crime program formally ended in December, and President Trump has left office. But the legacy of Operation Legend remains.
Among the impacts: of the 40 federal agents who arrived as part of Operation Legend in August, 24 are now permanently assigned to Memphis, said Mike Dunavant, who was Trump’s appointee as U.S. attorney in West Tennessee.
“That’s a a pretty big shot in the arm for a city this size.”
And some of those agents who arrived with Operation Legend continue to work side-by-side with local police. For instance, new FBI special agent in charge Douglas Korneski last year described how FBI agents had begun working with the Memphis Police Department’s homicide unit to identify patterns underlying local crimes.
Today, two federal analysts continue to work with the Multi-agency Gang Unit and MPD’S homicide bureau, said police spokeswoman Lt. Karen Rudolph.
Federal authorities generally don’t release personnel counts in specific areas, and it’s not clear what percentage of federal assets here the 24 new agents represent.
Operation Legend was a prominent example of a significant trend in law enforcement in Memphis: an increased federal role in both investigations and prosecutions.
The federal role matters because federal prosecution usually means harsher punishment.
With President Biden now in the White House, it remains to be seen how the local legacy of Operation Legend and the focus of federal prosecution might change in the years ahead.
Outgoing federal prosecutor says job is about punishment.
“You know, the goals of criminal prosecution is first and foremost to punish people for their bad actions,” Dunavant said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s OK to say in the criminal justice system, that our primary goal is to be punitive. I know there are people who don’t believe that’s OK, but that is OK.”
As he sees it, rehabilitation of the offender comes after punishment, incapacitation and deterrence.
“I agree that there can be (a) multidisciplinary approach to violent crime. But I am not a social worker. I am a federal prosecutor.”
Dunavant leaves Sunday as Biden’s administration moves to put its own appointees into office. A career prosecutor, Joe Murphy, will take over as acting U.S. attorney until the Biden administration names a political appointee.
Might that new federal prosecutor in Memphis see the prosecutor’s job differently?
Across the country, a new generation of prosecutors and criminal justice reformers see a different role for these attorneys, including trying to reduce crime without increasing the number of people behind bars.
A Memphis defense attorney, Blake Ballin, said federal gun prosecutions sometimes sweep up low-level offenders along with the most dangerous ones.
“They’re going after convicted felons who are accused of possessing weapons, but that doesn’t always mean repeat offenders, that doesn’t always mean violent offenders. In addition to prosecuting those people, who might deserve long sentences, you also have people who might one or two non-violent drug offenses on their records.”
He said he hopes to see some changes.
“Well, I can tell you that my hope is that the Biden administration will institute much more progressive policies, and will understand that all gun crimes, all possessions of firearms don’t need to be prosecuted the same way. And that incarceration is not always the answer to our community’s problems.”
266 arrests, including 124 federal charges
Legend Taliferro was a 4-year-old boy who was shot and killed in his home in Kansas City, Missouri, in June.
The Trump administration and thenattorney General William Barr adopted the boy’s name for an anti-crime initiative that involved sending federal agents to Memphis and several other cities.
The federal agencies involved included the FBI, Drug Enforcement Adminstration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security Investigations, Dunavant said. That last agency is the investigative arm of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and pursues international crimes including
drug trafficking.
In Memphis, local and federal officers worked together for about 120 days, from August to December, in a task force housed in the Multi-agency Gang Unit, Dunavant said.
All told, 266 arrests were attributed to the task force during that 120-day period. And of those, 124 people were charged with federal offenses. Of those federally charged, 53 were on drug charges, 46 on gun charges, and 24 for other violent crimes such as carjacking.
The press release also says the effort led to seizure of 210 guns, several kilograms of various illegal drugs and $670,000 in what authorities called “criminal proceeds.”
Operation Legend and related federal efforts also brought grant money to Memphis, including nearly $10 million in grant funds to the MPD to support hiring of 50 new officers.
Among the cases that Dunavant highlighted was that three men accused of burglarizing Shoot Point Blank gun range on Aug. 2 and stealing 32 guns.
The three have entered not guilty pleas.
Did Operation Legend work? Memphis saw a record number of killings during 2020 — more than 330. Dunavant argues it could have been worse. “How many more deaths would have occurred if we had not removed and federally prosecuted (124) offenders in 120 days?”
Controversy from the beginning
Operation Legend followed months of protests of police use of force around the United States. At the start of the program, some critics expressed concern that federal agents would interfere with people’s rights to free speech and expression.
Barr, the former attorney general, leaned into the politics of the moment — in an October visit to Memphis, for instance, he blamed the media for what he called a “false narrative” of bad police officers, and suggested criticism had worsened violent crime.
Memphis City Council member Michalyn Easter-thomas last year was one of the sponsors of a resolution critical of Operation Legend. It failed to pass.
This week she said defenders of Operation Legend wrongly focus on the number of people arrested.
“The wins in policing should not be measured upon how many people you are able to put in jail. That should not be the focus. That should not be the point ... We know that we have to arrest offenders, but we also should be in the business of deterring crime as well. And that comes with a multi-pronged approach,” she said.
She went on to mention investments in community organizations and youth. She said as she doesn’t see Operation
Legend as a win for Memphis.
“Because it does not get to the roots of our issues, it does not positively impact community relations with police. It only furthers the thought of that the only time we can see a gain in our police organization is when we make arrests of mainly Black and brown people. And that’s the problem.”
Changes ahead?
President Biden’s pick for new U.S. Attorney General is Merrick Garland, a longtime judge who former President Barack Obama nominated in 2016 -Obama’s last year in office -- to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. The Senate Republican majority refused to hold a hearing or vote on Garland’s nomination.
If approved by the Senate next week, Garland will lead the Justice Department’s actions across the country, including oversight of U.S. attorneys in places like Memphis.
It’s unclear how Garland might influence prosecutions in Memphis, particularly the gun prosecutions that make up a substantial part of federal work here.
In his senate confirmation hearing, Garland addressed gun control broadly, but didn’t talk about prosecutions of specific gun statutes.
However, his answers differed somewhat from the Trump administration’s law-and-order, pro-police approach.
When pressed about whether the Biden administration supports the “defund the police” movement, Garland answered that neither he nor President Biden support it, USA TODAY reported.
“President Biden believes in giving the resources to police departments to help them reform and gain the trust of their communities,” Garland said.
He also expressed openness to additional “pattern and practice” investigations of abuse by police departments.
Dunavant’s future plans
Dunavant declined to say what job he might be taking next but said that at 50, he’s not ready to quit working.
The Biden administration is expected to speak with U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the top Democrat in the area, and other attorneys before presenting a candidate for confirmation to the U.S. Senate. It’s unclear when a new candidate will be presented.
Investigative reporter Sarah Macaraeg contributed to this article.
Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly can be reached at 529-5296, daniel. connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.