(The Center Square) – Potentially hundreds of federal agents are heading to Chicago in an effort to quell the city’s outbreak of gun violence.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held a news conference after she received a call from President Donald Trump on Wednesday. She said that federal agents’ actions in Portland were an unacceptable infringement of the rights of residents there, but took a slightly more accepting tone to Operation Legend and the planned additional manpower in her city.
“They’re FBI, DEA, and ATF and they will be plugged into the existing infrastructure of those agencies,” she said. “If those agents are here to actually work in partnership in 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. That may add value.”
Under Operation Legend, the agents in Chicago will be at the direction of John Lausch Jr., U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Lightfoot and Lausch worked together in her time as a prosecutor and considers him a friend.
U.S. Attorney Bill Barr said Wednesday that agents in Chicago will not be tasked with quelling mob action as they were in Portland, rather investigate murders and aid local law enforcement in apprehending criminals.
“The operations we’re talking about are the standard, anti-crime fighting activities we have been carrying out around the country for decades,” he said.
Trump said Wednesday that Lightfoot and others repeatedly refused to request additional assistance from Washington while murders escalated, largely due to gang violence.
“People are dying in Chicago and other cities and we can solve the problem,” he said in a news conference. “They have to ask us but we can solve the problem.”
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said Wednesday there are 117,000 gang members, 55 major gangs, along with 2,500 subset factions in the city.
