CHICAGO — A day after Chicago saw a series of mass shootings in a matter of hours, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared in the city Thursday to meet with police and community leaders as the Justice Department launches new efforts to stem the flow of illegal firearms.
Garland, a native of north suburban Lincolnwood, began the day in Washington, D.C., to announce the formation of strike forces aimed at going after gun traffickers in several cities, including Chicago, at a time when urban America had seen spikes in gun violence.
He then traveled to Chicago to meet with U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who will oversee the local strike force, as well as police and community leaders, officials said.
Garland also traveled to the Harrison District police station on Chicago’s West Side to visit its “strategic decision support center,” a nerve center that crunches crime data and helps police supervisors determine where to deploy cops.
Flanked by numerous officials, Garland walked slowly through a hallway in the station where he was greeted by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, police Superintendent David Brown and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill).
Garland and several local and federal law enforcement, and city officials, followed him into the cramped Strategic Decision Support Center, where a police officer and crime analyst guided Garland through the numerous TV screens that crowded the room.
The screens showed video surveillance of street corners, a map and information about suspects accused of crimes on the West Side.
Afterward, Lightfoot said she had a “very good visit” with Garland and thinks the task force will make a significant difference by coordinating federal resources against gun trafficking across state lines.
Most guns in Chicago are streaming across the border from neighboring states and the South, and the task force will put more focus on the issue, Lightfoot said.
“I feel very, very confident of that,” the mayor said.
“(Some) have said ‘well there’s no additional resources,’ that’s not the point,” Lightfoot said. “It’s focused coordination, collaboration, across state lines. That’s going to be a game-changer.”
Lightfoot also said people in Chicago neighborhoods are more afraid of federal prison time. Echoing Lightfoot, Brown said the “real benefit” of federal help is that it will allow illegal gun purchases to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Later in the day, Garland was slated to participate in a group discussion with a community organization that mediates gang conflicts and provides support for people most at risk of being a party to violence, either as a victim or perpetrator. President Joe Biden’s administration has proposed spending about $5 billion toward such groups that specialize in violence prevention efforts.
That meeting was to be held at St. Agatha Catholic Church, about a mile south of the police station. The church sits within blocks of two mass shootings Wednesday evening that wounded nine people and left a 15-year-old boy killed.
Hours later, eight people were wounded in a shooting on the Near North Side just west of DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
The strike force — a mix of federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other law enforcement agencies — will be tasked with identifying and disrupting pipelines that are responsible for bringing illegal guns onto city streets. Law enforcement officials for years have blamed lax gun laws in neighboring states like Indiana and Wisconsin for making it easier for Chicago criminals to obtain guns when they’re not allowed to own them.
Biden’s administration announced similar strike forces being formed in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Washington, D.C.
The teams are the latest strategy in the federal government’s effort to fight gun violence, and Chicago has been a focal point of that fight.
Last year, under then-President Donald Trump’s administration, Chicago and other cities received a surge of federal agents to fight violence as part of Operation Legend, named in honor of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed in Kansas City, Missouri. In Chicago, the operation involved a few hundred federal agents from the ATF, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Chicago police and other big-city police departments routinely work with federal law enforcement on criminal investigations. Such partnerships over the years have included Project Exile, aimed at shifting more gun prosecutions to federal court for tougher penalties, and Project Safe Neighborhoods, designed to better coordinate federal resources and local intelligence on crime.
One of the key missions of the federal anti-violence effort is also to be more aggressive in going after straw purchasers, people who make legal purchases of guns on behalf of criminals. Such rogue purchases can potentially be made under the noses of licensed firearms dealers, even in Illinois where the gun laws are considerably stricter than Indiana and Wisconsin.
Garland’s visit comes as Chicago police Superintendent David Brown on Monday announced a separate strategy to expand the department’s own firearm investigation efforts.
The Police Department announced that a dedicated 50-person unit, which started work last weekend and consists of already existing teams of cops, will go after illegal gun traffickers, including straw purchasers.
The department will also focus on people who have guns even though their state-issued firearm owner’s identification cards have been revoked, Brown said. He said his new effort, first organized in the spring, will “complement” the federal gun-trafficking strike forces.
Brown is facing pressure from aldermen and other critics of the Police Department who want a quick reduction in shootings and homicides that have crippled parts of the city this year.
Homicides were down 3% over 2020 with 410 homicides, statistics show, 11 fewer than last year. But shootings — incidents where at least one person was shot fatally or nonfatally — were up 9% over last year and 60% over 2019, according to official CPD statistics through Tuesday.
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