Chicago experimented with using federal agents and a flood of cops to tackle crime nearly a decade ago, and it saved lives.
But Dem city leaders canned the program, and didn’t ask for more help because they feared the “optics” would ruin their careers, according to a prosecutor who helped plan the crime-fighting push.
The Windy City flooded its three most dangerous districts with extra Chicago cops and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the US Marshals during a single weekend in November 2016 as part of an experimental crime crackdown.
And the operation was a stunning success — just one shooting was recorded across the normally gunfire-filled streets during the weekend, while citywide crime dropped 41%, local outlets reported at the time.
The program shows that stepping up law enforcement presence in high crime areas can quell the violence — something that President Trump wants to do by deploying the National Guard to the city.
But, now — as then — state and city leaders are pushing back.
“No mayor wants to be the first mayor of Chicago to ask the National Guard to come in to patrol the streets for public safety,” said former 1st Assistant State’s Attorney for Cook County Robert Milan — who helped drive the 2016 program.
“I was told that.”
Milan thinks Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are fools for fighting the “unbelievable opportunity” to clean up the streets on Trump’s dime.
“This has been going on since before I was born. When are we ever going to deal with it?” Milan — a lifelong Chicagoan and prosecutor of over 20 years — said of Chicago’s violent crime.
Over Labor Day weekend, eight people were killed and 58 shot across the city.
Chicago has led the nation in body count for more than a decade, and the murder rate — though down from pandemic highs — is still dramatically higher than New York City or Los Angeles.
Johnson and Pritzker have said Chicago doesn’t need federal troops, and tried to downplay crime — saying that shootings are down year-over-year.
Milan doesn’t buy it.
“It’s pure political. Because it’s Trump, we’re not going to do it. So people are going to die,” he added “A real leader asks for help.”
For just one weekend during Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s administration, hundreds of extra police officers were deployed to the neighborhoods in Chicago’s South and West sides, along state police troopers and federal agents.
Milan said he and former US Marshal James Smith cooked up the plan from another police saturation operation carried out in Chicago’s K-Town neighborhood for about two months in the early 2000s, which resulted in no shootings during a period that otherwise would have had “dozens.”
“We had wiretaps going on the gangs, so we’re listening and they’re saying ‘We gotta get out of here — 5-0 is everywhere — we can’t do anything,” he said of the 2000s operation, which was ultimately shuttered over limited local resources.
And when the city tried again in 2016, it became quickly apparent that city coffers and police force still couldn’t sustain the operation and that federal support would be required to continue.
So, Milan asked city leaders, “Why not bring in the National Guard?”
But the idea was immediately dismissed by the city, he said, and crime surged back into the beleaguered districts once the law enforcement returned to normal.
Trump signaled this week that he’d decided to send the National Guard to Chicago, Baltimore and possibly New Orleans as he did in Washington, DC, in August.
DC’s Democratic leaders have reported a 45% reduction in crime since the Guard arrived, but Chicago’s leftwing mayor and Gov. Pritzker — who is eyeing a 2028 White House run — have remained adamant the National Guard is not wanted.
“When did we become a country where it’s okay for the US president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything — especially something we don’t want?” Pritzker told reporters Tuesday after Trump indicated he’d made up his mind.
But not all Chicagoans agree with that assessment of what they want.
Ramona Paravola, operations manager of the minority-led Republican group Chicago Flips Red, said she’s heard from scores of Chicagoans in the city’s toughest neighborhoods that they would be happy to have the National Guard come in to help local law enforcement.
“When I ask people that I know, and neighbors, most of them will say, ‘Yeah, I don’t really care what we do to get the crime better,” Paravola said.
“Many people there want anything, and that includes the Guard to come and help clean up their neighborhoods,” she added.
“They’re afraid to go to the parks. They’re afraid to go out after dark. The good people are prisoners in their home.”
