A day after President Donald Trump declared he was ready to “send in the Feds” if Chicago can’t reduce its homicides, Mayor Rahm Emanuel warned against deploying the National Guard, saying it would hurt efforts to restore trust in the police.
Trump offered no details on what kind of federal intervention he was suggesting or if it could involve troops, but the mayor cautioned that using the military could make matters worse.
“We’re going through a process of reinvigorating community policing, building trust between the community and law enforcement,” the mayor told reporters Wednesday. Sending troops “is antithetical to the spirit of community policing.”
He said he welcomed federal help battling “gangs, guns and drugs.”
On Tuesday night, Trump tweeted: “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!”
If the president was suggesting the use of federal troops, such a plan could face practical and constitutional obstacles. A law dating back to 1878 prohibits the deployment of federal troops to do the jobs of domestic police, with some rarely invoked exceptions.
