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Chicago Violence Sparks War of Words Between Trump, Mayor

Associated Press

   CHICAGO - The war of words between Chicago's mayor and President Donald
   Trump escalated after a weekend when 12 were killed in the city and
   dozens injured by gunfire, with Lori Lightfoot rejecting any suggestion
   federal law enforcement officers should be dispatched to the city and
   Trump all but promising to send them.

   In a letter sent to the president on Monday, Lightfoot said the
   deployment of secret, federal agents who "arrest, and detain residents
   without any cause" is a bad idea and urged the president not to do it.

   Lightfoot, a frequent Trump critic, slammed the president in the letter
   for "unhelpful" rhetoric and detailed ways the federal government could
   help the city to reduce violence, including gun safety reform, public
   safety support, community outreach and community investment.

   The Department of Homeland Security was planning to deploy about 150
   Homeland Security Investigations agents to Chicago, according to an
   official with direct knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to
   speak publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. Those
   agents generally do lengthy investigations into human trafficking,
   drugs and weapons smuggling and child exploitation, but they have also
   been deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border during the height of the crisis
   there to help.

   The Trump administration sent federal officers into Portland, Oregon,
   after weeks of protests there over police brutality and racial
   injustice that followed the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
   Oregon's governor and Portland's mayor have expressed anger with the
   presence of the federal agents, saying that the city's protests had
   started to ease just as the federal agents started taking action.

   However, Trump, framing such protests in the nation's large cities as a
   failure by "liberal Democrats" who run them, praised the officers'
   actions and said he was looking to send agents to other cities.

   He pointed to rising gun violence in Chicago, the nation's
   third-largest city, where more than 63 people were shot, 12 fatally,
   over the weekend.

   "How about Chicago? Would you say they need help after this weekend?"
   Trump told reporters at the White House. "You know the numbers that you
   hear, the numbers? Many, many shot. Many, many killed."

   "Reasonable local police officials, including our superintendent, know
   that it is a dangerous road for us to go down," Lightfoot said late
   Monday in an interview on MSNBC. "We are not going to have people who
   don't know our streets, don't know our neighborhoods and then who are
   engaging in clearly unconstitutional conduct operating at will in our
   city."

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