Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday in Chicago trumpeted the success of Operation Legend, an initiative President Donald Trump expanded in July to send additional federal agents here.
By “taking chronic violent criminals off the street, we will force crime rates down,” Barr said at a news conference at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
Barr also said that 400 federal agents had been committed to Chicago as part of the program, as well as more than $9 million in police grant money and $3.5 million in technical assistance. He said federal prosecutors have charged 124 defendants.
“Many of those defendants are now detained pending trial rather than causing harm on the streets,” Barr said.
The federal help arrived as Chicago again struggled with gun violence this summer. That violence has continued, leading to the fatal shooting of an 8-year-old girl who was riding in a car with family members over the Labor Day weekend.
Still, Operation Legend appears to have contributed to a surge in new gun cases filed in federal court in Chicago. That followed a bump in federal gun prosecutions in June, after the looting and mayhem that first hit the city in late May.
The new agents sent here under the program were meant to work in partnership with Chicago police and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office under the direction of U.S. Attorney John Lausch. Last week, Lausch’s office announced that 103 defendants had been charged since the launch of Operation Legend with felony offenses related to violent crime.
Most of those were charged in federal court in Chicago, including more than 60 defendants facing a lead firearms-related charge, and more than 25 facing a lead drug trafficking charge. Several cases involving false statements have also been filed in federal court in Northwest Indiana, according to Lausch’s office.
Lausch appeared with Barr at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Wednesday morning, along with other top federal prosecutors and leaders from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Operation Legend is named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was shot and killed in his sleep June 29 in Kansas City, Missouri.
