Four years ago, President Donald Trump’s law-and-order campaign became a part of his inaugural address when he vowed “this American carnage stops right here and right now.”

A similar message is set to echo through this week’s Republican National Convention.

“We will bring back law and order. … The words ‘law and order’ are words the Democrats don’t like to use,” Trump told supporters last week as he toured the Midwest to counter Democratic National Convention programming. “The Democrats are promising to elevate their left-wing war on cops. Their sympathies lie with lawbreakers and criminals; my heart is with law-abiding, hardworking Americans … and my heart is also with the great men and women of law enforcement.”

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who made national news when they emerged from their home in St. Louis, Missouri, brandishing firearms to confront protesters, were among the featured speakers on the RNC’s first night. 

In an interview on Fox & Friends, Mark McCloskey defended their actions, referring to their hometown as “a very dangerous place,” acknowledging this year’s rise in homicides.

Two hundred and fifty miles west, Kansas City, Missouri, has also seen a dramatic rise in murders. Yet the first time Mayor Quinton Lucas heard that nearly 200 federal agents were headed to his city to combat violent crime was when the White House announced it on live television.

There was no consultation, no planning for a collaboration that would normally take weeks of preparation. Lucas was suspicious of a possible political power play.

More than a month later, law enforcement authorities are crediting the federal deployment with assisting in the arrests of 17 local murder suspects, including a Kansas City man accused in the slaying of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, for whom the federal strategy is named. Nationwide, nearly 1,500 suspects have been swept up in recent weeks as part of Operation Legend, which now has a presence in eight other U.S. cities: Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Memphis and St. Louis.

OPERATION LEGEND: AG Barr announces 1,000 arrests, including suspects in 90 murders

“Operation Legend is working,” said Tim Garrison, the chief federal prosecutor in Kansas City.

 

Despite the encouraging numbers, uneasy local officials have refused to fully embrace the Trump administration strategy, fearing that their cities have been co-opted by a sagging presidential campaign in search of a popular law-and-order theme that is set to be used like a hammer throughout the convention.

“The reason this has been rolled out on a national scale is because we are in an election year,” Lucas said. “The coronavirus response doesn’t seem to be polling well for them, so they have moved to something else (violent crime) that they can try to do something about. They are trying to make crime a partisan issue.”

Similar concerns have been voiced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Memphis, Tennessee, where officials were initially unnerved by the Trump administration’s deployment of federal officers to battle protesters in Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., though they are not Operation Legend cities.

“The skepticism continues today,” said Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Gilbert Gallegos, adding that the city still has not been briefed on the full scope of the federal law enforcement effort in New Mexico. “The political overtones are a big part of this.”

Trump is not the first Republican to adopt the theme. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush all campaigned on various iterations of law and order, though the issue lost potency as crime rates fell during the 1990s and 2000s.

Attorney General William Barr has been unapologetic in the government’s push into cities largely led by Democrats. Leading the Trump administration’s effort, the attorney general has cast it both as a strategy to fight violent crime and a move to boost local police who have been the targets of social justice demonstrations across the country after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis officers.

“Operation Legend is the heart of the federal government’s response to this uptick in violent crime,” Barr said last week in Kansas City, where he unveiled the latest arrest numbers. “Its mission is to save lives, solve crimes, and take violent offenders off our streets before they can claim more victims.  Rather than demonizing or de-funding police, we are supporting and strengthening our law enforcement partners.”

‘Deadly politicians’

From its start, the Justice Department’s law enforcement operation has been framed in starkly political terms by none other than the president.

“For decades, politicians running many of our nation’s major cities have put the interests of criminals above the rights of law-abiding citizens,” Trump said last month at a White House ceremony marking Operation Legend’s launch. “These same politicians have now embraced the far-left movement to break up our police departments, causing violent crime in their cities to spiral – and I mean spiral seriously out of control.”

Trump specifically called out the leadership of Albuquerque, Chicago and other cities as “too proud” to request federal government assistance.

“My administration will be working to remove dangerous offenders sprung loose by these deadly policies – and, frankly, by these deadly politicians,” Trump said at the event, where he was joined by Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray. “My vision for America’s cities could not be more different from the lawlessness being pushed by the extreme radical left.”

The president’s remarks were met with immediate pushback from Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller, police Chief Michael Geier, Kansas City Mayor Lucas and officials from other cities.

“We always welcome partnerships in constitutional crime fighting that are in step with our community, but we won’t sell out our city for a bait-and-switch excuse to send secret police to Albuquerque,” Keller said then, referring to the federal officers deployed to Portland and Washington whose uniforms did not always identify their agency affiliations. “Operation Legend is not real crime fighting; it’s politics standing in the way of police work and makes us less safe.”

Since then, Keller – who has described crime as the “most pressing issue” facing the city – said New Mexico U.S. Attorney John Anderson has provided assurances that the mission of federal agents deployed to the city would not expand beyond the crackdown on violent crime.

Nevertheless, the mayor said the city “remained concerned” because of the president’s remarks and vowed to “hold the appropriate people accountable if this is not true.”

Gallegos, the Albuquerque police spokesman, said the rushed nature of the operation, offering assistance that the city did not request, continues to fuel skepticism about the federal government’s intentions in New Mexico.

More than a month after about 35 federal agents and officers were announced for the collaborative law enforcement effort in Albuquerque, Gallegos said the police department is not aware of how many federal officers will be deployed to the area.

“We don’t know,” he said.

‘No permission necessary’

The local tension generated by the federal government’s rapidly expanding violent-crime strategy was on full display last week in Memphis, where a group of City Council members offered a resolution publicly opposing the federal deployment of 40 agents and officers to the city.

Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas, sponsor of the proposal, said she worried about a lack of local control over the program, even though violent crime has surged in the city. 

Murder and aggravated assault numbers are all running ahead of 2019, according to a midyear review by the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

The resolution prompted an unusually sharp rebuke from U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant, who added that resistance to law enforcement was “not legitimate public policy.”

“With all due respect to the council, no one’s permission is necessary for us to surge these federal resources into Memphis,” the prosecutor told city leaders. “Federal law still applies here on the streets of Memphis. As long as I’m the United States attorney, we will, in fact, aggressively, consistently, and unapologetically enforce that federal law against the worst of the worst criminals for harming our citizens and terrorizing our community.”

Easter-Thomas’ resolution was ultimately defeated, but an uneasy undercurrent remains.

“We all should be wary of this, if only because of who is in charge in the White House,” the councilwoman said in an interview.

Contributing: John Fritze