In Chicago, ‘the Feds’ Are Part of the Problem

January 26, 2017 at MI

Trump doesn’t need to send troops or officers but can help by pulling back the Justice Department.

President Trump repeated his vow Tuesday to “send in the Feds” if the authorities in Chicago are unable to quell the violence there. His sense of urgency about what he rightly labels the “carnage” in Chicago is welcome. By contrast, President Obama last year dismissed the rising homicides nationwide as a mere “uptick in murders and violent crime in some cities.”

Some uptick. Fifty-four people were shot in Chicago last weekend alone, six fatally. That brings the homicide total so far this year to 42, up from 34 during the same time last year, according to the Chicago Tribune. Comparing 2016 with 2015, homicides were up 58% and shootings were up 47%. Last year’s shooting victims included two dozen children 12 or under, including a 3-year-old boy now paralyzed for life.

Mr. Trump is right to draw attention to the growing toll, but he is wrong about what the federal government can do to fix it. His call to “send in the Feds” is ambiguous, but the phrase seems to suggest mobilizing the National Guard. Doing so would require the declaration of a national or state emergency. However gruesome the bloodshed, there is little precedent for mobilizing the National Guard to quell criminal gang violence.

Civil order has not broken down in the Windy City; local authorities continue to deliver basic services in the gang-infested South and West sides. The homicide rate, relative to population, is higher in Detroit, New Orleans and St. Louis. If Mr. Trump or his defense secretary, James Mattis, is going to declare Chicago a national emergency, those other cities deserve the same. And although Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked Mr. Trump for money, it’s unlikely he’d welcome troops.

If Mr. Trump’s reference to “the Feds” means federal law-enforcement officers, they’re already there. Local police in Chicago work on joint task forces with agents from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and…

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal

This article is republished with permission from our friends at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.