From Chicago to Cleveland to St.
Many more have been blamed by local prosecutors, authorities said, and some police departments receiving federal aid are seeing a change in their overall crime trends.
Under the program, known as Operation Legend, more than 1,000 federal lawmakers were sent to nine cities that experienced rising crime rates to work with local police in an uprising that sharply angered some local leaders.
But flanked by federal prosecutors and the families of victims of violent crime at a news conference in Kansas City, Barr hailed the program as “one of the most important law enforcement actions in the Department of Justice” and shared what he said “encouraging encouraging results” . ”
Leaders of law enforcement in Kansas City, Missouri, where 18 suspects of murder have been arrested since the launch of the program in July and five accused, agreed.
The city’s clearance rate for murderers, which measures the number being solved by police and referred for prosecution, has increased from 34% to 35% since early June.
“We would not have solved the cases as we had and we would not have any suspects in custody without our federal collaborators,” said city police officer Richard Smith. “This absolutely makes a difference.”
Federal and local co-operatives to combat crime have been routine over the last several years, although few have exercised as much control as Operation Legend.
Federal law enforcement officials often have access to superior research resources such as gun-tracing programs and can be a boon to local police departments in communities where murders regularly go unresolved.
Operation Legend was launched in early July with little fanfare and public attention, though it was expanded to more cities later that month, with many elected officials fearing it represented an effort by the Trump administration to quell a wave of demonstrations who had land all around.
President Donald Trump seemed to stir up the conflict, saying he was targeting areas “all run by liberal democrats” that he claimed had caused increasing crime with “defund the police” policies that took in progressive circles after the murder of George Floyd in May in the care of police.
But criticism fell in the days that followed, and the operation has since expanded to a total of nine cities. The results published by the Justice Department on Wednesday did not include figures from Indianapolis, where the program was launched just last week.
In Chicago, where dozens of children have died this year from gun violence, 61 people have been charged with federal crimes under Operation Legend, including 34 for firearm-related crimes.
In Milwaukee, where Democrats based this week’s presidential nomination convention, 11 people have been charged with federal crimes and 28 guns have been seized by the federal and local task forces.
The Justice Department’s program comes because violent crime has increased dramatically this year, albeit to far lower levels than the peaks of the early 1990s. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, murderers in 20 major U.S. cities increased by 37% from May to June, led by Chicago, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. Aggravated attacks jumped 35% over the same period, while other types of crime were down.
The think tank said it was too early to point a main driver for the trend, although it said the social stress caused by the coronavirus pandemic and recent national unrest could not be overlooked.
On Wednesday, Barr presented his own diagnoses for the upticks, which put them within a political context.
“This spike may have many reasons behind it. Some of it may be the overhauled aggression required by state and local quarantine orders,” Barr said.
“And I think it also has to do with the efforts we saw recently to demonize police and defend their work,” he added, without providing evidence.
Barr also argued that policies in some jurisdictions to release persons accused of violent crimes prior to their trials contribute to the trend, as it excludes witnesses who can take revenge against collaborating with investigations.
The ability to bring federal charges through affiliates like Operation Legend helps restore that, Barr said.
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