Byron York:
On Tuesday night President Trump tweeted that “If Chicago doesn’t fix the horrible ‘carnage’ going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!”
Put aside the mild trolling with the word “carnage.” (Trump took a lot of flak for using it in his inaugural address, but the plain fact is, there is a lot of carnage in Chicago right now.) The substance of Trump’s tweet — proposed federal intervention to stop the violence in Chicago — is sure to spark opposition.
There will be opposition from the right — “All this tweet shows is Trump was watching Fox when they flashed this statistic, & that he has no concept of appropriate role of fed govt,” tweeted Bill Kristol, editor at large of The Weekly Standard. And opposition from the left — “Donald Trump threatens to impose martial law in Chicago,” wrote Salon.
Two points. First, there is ample precedent of the Justice Department getting involved in local policing. That was, in fact, a major part of the department’s mission under Barack Obama; more than 20 police departments around the country are under consent decrees reached after Obama Justice Department action against them. So Trump can easily dismiss the concerns of Obama supporters who protest that the federal government should not be meddling with local police.
Second, there are things the Justice Department could do that would likely help reduce the killing in Chicago. For some readers, Trump’s tweet probably conjured images of troops in the streets. But some Republicans close to law enforcement have been thinking about what the feds might do to improve things in Chicago. From one of those Republicans, here is a list:
1. Instruct U.S. Attorney to prosecute all criminal defendants who commit crimes with a gun for 5-year mandatory minimum sentence. See Project Exile. Same for felons in possession.
2. Take control of DOJ civil rights division investigation (investigation was asked for by Rahm [Emanuel] and [Dick] Durbin) to prevent another ridiculous consent decree from being agreed to by Rahm and approved by a court. This would stop the court from putting an [American Civil Liberties Union] type in charge of monitoring the police.
3. Go to court to try and reverse Rahm’s settlement with ACLU that requires a cop to fill out a form describing his reasonable suspicion for stopping and frisking a suspect. This would tell cops that it’s OK to do their jobs again.
Stop and frisk every suspicious bootlick. Most likely they are packing illegal heat. Since obama created a few vacancies down at Gitmo they can keep some of the remaining goat humpers company.
Have the mayor and city council arrested and charged with violating america immagration law and harboring the enemy