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Trump’s focus on Chicago violence could be helpful, but will he stay committed to real assistance?

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

That’s what Lightfoot didn’t want in Chicago, and she was hardly alone. Trump had announced his administration would be paying visits to Chicago and suggested other cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, where he might administer more of his tough love.

He announced a new program called Operation Legend, named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro of Kansas City, Missouri, who was shot fatally as he slept in his room in June.

Unlike the shock-troop approach deployed in Portland, Operation Legend aims to assist existing local law enforcement, not create a Portland-style camouflage-wearing paramilitary strike force.

Away from the glare of media spotlights, Trump and Lightfoot apparently found something of which Washington has not seen much these days: common ground.

“We welcome actual partnership, but we do not welcome dictatorship,” she said. “We do not welcome authoritarianism, and we do not welcome the unconstitutional arrests and detainments of our residents, and that is something I will not tolerate.”

Can we all get along? Chicago certainly welcomes federal help, as other mayors have welcomed it before her.

And, contrary to Trump’s election-year stereotypes about “cities run by soft-hearted far-left Democratic mayors,” Lightfoot is a former federal prosecutor who knows and says she trusts U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who will head the Operation Legend operation locally.

That’s smart. Chicago’s crime problems are complex. So is its history of police misconduct complaints. A true partnership between local and federal authorities, with each side assisting as well as holding the other accountable, offers a path toward a real solution.

 

But a big question remains: Will Trump stick with this issue if it doesn’t reverse his current slide behind his Democratic rival Biden in battleground state polls?

Coinciding with his announcement of Operation Legend, Trump’s campaign has been spending millions on ads that try to tie lawlessness to Democrats and far-left “abolish the police” movements to Biden, even though Biden has called for increasing funds for police along with social services.

Ah, there goes the neighborhood. The “law and order” card worked well for Richard Nixon in 1968 and George H.W. Bush in 1988, among other Republicans. But I detect a hint of desperation in Trump’s playing that tune now, when polls show that the coronavirus pandemic and unemployment appear to have stirred a greater sense of urgency among swing voters.

In the meantime, I still hope the president can do something that really does help those of us who live in Chicago and other cities fight surges in violence, if we can hold his attention long enough.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)


(c) 2020 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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