President Trump has warned he may soon “send in the feds” to Chicago to help reduce gun violence there, and while that may sound like a threat from the new president, there’s a precedent for federal aid in reducing gun violence.
And though it may sound like federal intrusion into local issues, there already signs that some cities might welcome that aid.
“Send more FBI, DEA, ATF agents,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said during a news conference this week. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore. Just send them.”
Emanuel was careful to say that he’s less interested in Trump visiting Chicago. “What I would really like is the federal resources,” Emanuel added.
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson echoed Emanuel’s statement about what kind of government help the city would want and need.
“[T]he Chicago Police Department is more than willing to work with the federal government to build on our partnerships with DOJ, FBI, DEA and ATF and boost federal prosecution rates for gun crimes in Chicago,” Johnson said.
The Trump White House declined to comment for this story. But in past cases, sending in “the feds” has meant having the federal government entering a partnership deal with local law enforcement to reduce gun violence. A recent example was seen last year, in Indianapolis, which saw more than 145 criminal homicides in 2016.
Troy Riggs of the Sagamore Institute, a think-tank in Indianapolis, the federal government can “bring a lot of tools to a city to assist” in combating gun violence.
“The federal government can support by having conversations with city leaders and come up with a crime reduction strategy,” Riggs told the Washington Examiner, something he said he was a part of when he was chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and the city’s director of public safety outreach.
The federal government has shown it can partner with local law enforcement to “focus on system issues.”
“That’s what leads to crime longterm,” he explained, citing issues such as poverty, education, hunger, mental health and unemployment as reasons why violent crime is committed.
Focusing on those issues has helped certain neighborhoods in Indianapolis, Riggs said. Before Riggs resigned as police chief at the end of last year, the highest crime neighborhoods saw a 10 percent reduction in homicides and a 7 percent drop in shootings.
The federal government’s aid was a big reason for that reduction. Riggs said federal aide can be as simple as grants given to social good groups or having gun turn ins with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
And those agencies are ready to help, including the ATF. According to Dillon McConnell, a public affairs official for the ATF, the Trump administration has not yet spoken to the agency about new steps to take in Chicago.
However, the ATF “looks forward to working with the President’s administration and Department of Justice on reducing violent crime in Chicago. ATF will also continue to work with its partners in the City of Chicago to address these problems,” McConnell told the Washington Examiner.
McConnell said the ATF “uses a variety of investigative techniques to conduct complex investigations to take the most violent trigger-pullers off of the street, and to identify firearms trafficking schemes as well as sources of crime guns.”
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but group also appears to be ready to work with Trump to prevent gun violence, and is already proposing its own ideas. The group sent a draft executive order to the White House that could apply to cities like Chicago and Indianapolis.
Section 2 of that order calls on federal agencies to do more to enforce existing gun laws against “bad apple” gun dealers.
(a) Failure to enforce existing gun laws and regulations is a major obstacle to reducing and preventing gun violence. Whereas just 5% of gun dealers are responsible for selling nearly 90% of all crime guns recovered by law enforcement, ATF only inspects any given dealer, on average, once every 5 years. If violations are found, ATF has been largely unable to reform or shut those dealers down. (b) The attorney general should direct ATF and U.S. attorneys to, in a timely fashion, identify, investigate, and hold accountable ‘bad apple’ gun dealers in violation of the law. The Justice Department will ensure adequate resources to enforce existing laws regarding sales to prohibited purchasers, straw purchasing, gun trafficking, and black market commerce.
