Friday, September 04, 2020

DoJ: Operation Legend Arrests 147 Murder Suspects — And 2,000 Overall — In Six Weeks

Ed Morrissey

How did the Department of Justice make over 2,000 arrests in less than two months of Operation Legend? In part by returning to the kind of effective law enforcement that cities have abandoned in 2020. US Attorney Justin Herdman told Fox & Friends that the efforts in nine cities have found almost 150 murder suspects since the late-July effort began, which is one reason why local police departments have welcomed federal help, Herdman claimed. The boost in resources at all levels allows officers to use broken-windows policing to find criminals who have been hiding in plain sight all along:
The anti-crime Operation Legend is “fully underway across the country” and has led to more than 2,000 arrests since its launch in early July, said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio Justin Herdman.
As of the end of August, he told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday, more than 470 people have been charged with federal crimes in major metropolitan cities, including nearly 150 people wanted for murder.
“We are not just arresting people for low-level warrants here,” Herdman said. “We’re talking about very violent fugitives, very violent criminals and we’re getting them off the streets of these nine cities across the country.”
...While the DoJ should get a large amount of credit for their work in getting violent criminals off the street, this points out the failure of leadership in these cities to support effective policing. For the past several months, political leadership has either ordered police to stop enforcing minor offenses or made it known that they would not support that level of enforcement. Criminals have seen this — correctly, as it turns out — as a signal of impunity. As a result, all crime has gotten out of control, including violent crime, and police have been overwhelmed by it, as well as by the riots in some cities.


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