President Joe Biden reportedly plans to send a “strike force” to Chicago, Illinois to help the city curb the spike in crimes.
The story: The move is part of a plan that the Justice Department announced late last month aimed at combating gun trafficking in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. It included a proposal to create “strike forces” with law enforcement officials from various agencies.
The teams will work with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and inform local and state law enforcement agencies about the origins of certain firearms and where they were used illegally, according to Fox News.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot met Biden at O’Hare Airport on Wednesday last week where they briefly talked.
Lightfoot suggested that Biden promised to send help “relatively soon.” ABC7 reports that she was referring to Biden’s promised “strike forces.”
What the mayor said: “My hope and my expectation is that they’re going to be coming relatively soon. I’ve made no secret of the fact that this is a matter of incredible urgency and I think the president’s plan is to make a difference in localities like Chicago this summer,” Lightfoot told reporters.
The mayor pointed out that she did not ask Biden to send federal troops to Chicago.
“I’m expecting those resources to be coming relatively soon, based upon a conversation I had yesterday, both with ATF and the President,” Lightfoot told the Chicago Sun Times’ Lynn Sweet.
“And no, we don’t need federal troops; we need federal resources of a different kind. And I’ve been very vocal about that; really vocal about both issues since 2019, and I talked at length last summer about the Trump administration’s disastrous policy of sending troops into cities like Portland and Seattle, which was an unmitigated disaster. Troops don’t know how to do local law enforcement. They’re not interchangeable,” the mayor added.
Worth noting: Biden met with Lightfoot after the Fourth of July weekend when more than 100 people were shot and at least 19 killed in Chicago, making it the most violent weekend in the city so far, this year. Shortly before the two talked on, one Chicago police officer and two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms were shot.
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