Donald Trump Has Sent 'The Feds' To Chicago To Tackle Gun Violence
Four days into his presidency, Donald Trump threatened to "send in the Feds!" if Chicago didn't fix its "horrible carnage" of gun violence.
On Thursday, he did just that.
According to The Chicago Sun-Times, 20 agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives have been sent to the Windy City to tackle gun crimes.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed the news on Friday, saying in a statement that the Trump administration "will not let the bloodshed go on."
The ATF agents have teamed up with 20 officers from the Chicago Police Department and Illinois State Police to form a permanent strike task force to solve shootings and find gun traffickers who are bringing illegal weapons into the city.
There are already 35 to 40 ATF agents within Chicago.
"We’ve been doing this all along but now it’s being amped up,” said Dave Coulson, a spokesman for the ATF's Chicago office. "It's a more concerted effort."
The idea for the strike force was conceived last November while Barack Obama was president, Coulson said.
Trump took credit for the move early Friday morning, tweeting that "Crime and killings in Chicago have reached such epidemic proportions that I am sending in Federal help."
"1714 shootings in Chicago this year!" he added.
Trump's count is off by a bit: The Chicago Tribune reported that there have been at least 1,760 shootings as of Friday morning. (That's fewer than this time last year.)
On Friday morning, a spokesman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel criticized Trump for attacking Chicago on Twitter, telling The Atlantic: "If the president was as interested in taking action on public safety as he is in tweeting about it, we would have seen these resources months ago."
But Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson praised the move to form the strike force in a statement, saying it would "significantly help our police officers stem the flow of illegal guns and create a culture of accountability for the small subset of individuals and gangs who disproportionately drive violence in our city.”
