Chicago Police, Federal Officials To Announce Gun Violence ‘Strike Force’

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Chicago police and federal authorities announced Friday a joint effort aimed at cracking down on gun crimes in the violence-plagued city.

Officials say this effort will combine police officers, state troopers, federal agents and state and federal prosecutors to target illegal guns and repeat gun offenders, which authorities in Chicago have long pointed to as causes of the city’s bloodshed. The announcement came at the beginning of the July 4 holiday weekend, typically among the deadliest periods in Chicago, which in recent years has struggled with surging levels of gun violence.

The Department of Justice provided new details regarding the creation of Crime Gun Strike Force, a local-federal partnership that had previously been announced. The team, which began its work on June 1, consists of 20 Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents, six intelligence research specialists, 12 Chicago police officers, two state police officers and four ballistics specialists, the Justice Department said.

“The Trump Administration will not let the bloodshed go on; we cannot accept these levels of violence,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “That’s why, under President Trump’s strong leadership, we have created the Chicago Gun Strike Force and are sending 20 more permanent ATF agents to Chicago, reallocating federal prosecutors and prioritizing prosecutions to reduce gun violence, and working with our law enforcement partners to stop the lawlessness.”

Chicago had 762 homicides last year, more than the combined gun-related death toll in New York and Los Angeles, the only two larger American cities, and the number of shootings has remained high this year.

Earlier Friday, President Donald Trump issued a statement on Twitter saying that the violence has “reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help.”

During a press briefing on Friday afternoon, a CBS reporter brought up the president’s tweet and asked deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders if the crime problem in Chicago is at least in part “a gun control problem or a firearm-access control problem.”

“I think that the crime is probably driven more by morality than anything else. So I think that this is a law enforcement issue,” Sanders said, saying that the administration has been trying to add additional law enforcement support.

Sanders later clarified that her comment on morality was “not a public policy.”

During his presidential campaign, Trump has repeatedly weighed in on the bloodshed in Chicago. In January, Trump tweeted that he would “send in the feds,” which prompted some uncertainty in Chicago, where considerable federal resources were already on the ground and regularly collaborating with police.

“We always have been here,” David Coulson, a spokesman for the Chicago field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said at the time. “We work very closely with the Chicago Police Department.”

Trump’s past comments on the city have been critical of the local police and other local officials, including his January suggestion that the violence is “very easily fixable” and that local authorities were “not doing the job.”

His remarks have drawn some pointed responses from the local police. After he mentioned Chicago’s violence in February, Eddie Johnson – the city’s police superintendent – said he hoped the Trump administration would “finally respond” to local requests for more help. Last year, after then-candidate Trump suggested the violence in Chicago could be stopped in days, Johnson said police would welcome whatever “magic bullet” Trump had.

Local officials, in response to Trump’s earlier comments, have said they had asked his administration for more help tracking illegal guns and for more federal gun prosecutions.

“More than just a new strategy or tactic, we are foundationally changing the way we fight crime in Chicago,” Johnson said in a statement. “This new strike force will significantly help our police officers stem the flow of illegal guns and create a culture of accountability for the small subset of individuals and gangs who disproportionally drive violence in our city.”

Johnson said that the ultimate goal is to make Chicago safer by combining “tech-based nerve centers” in the city tracking gunshots and crimes with harsher penalties and prosecutions for people accused of gun crimes and homicides. The Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Organized Crime and the ATF’s Chicago fieldoffice will work with the team, as will prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s Office as well as the state’s attorney’s office.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced plans to send more federal resources to 12 cities to help combat violence. Chicago was not among the cities in that group, which officials said would be expanded later this year.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Mark Berman, Wesley Lowery

{Matzav}


1 COMMENT

  1. Are the guns used in these Chicago murders, ones which were purchased legally? The left is constantly lecturing the evil law abiding white folks, about the need to end the archaic 2nd ammendment once and for all. Make the purchase of guns, by white folks, illegal across the board and only criminals should be allowed to “own” them.

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