Categories
News News Blog

Feds: Operation LeGend Yielded Most Arrests in Memphis

Operation LeGend, the controversial federal surge of money and agents sent to Memphis to combat violent crime, ended recently and yielded more arrests here than any of the seven other cities where it was deployed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced the results of the operation that began here on August 6th. Then, it was announced that 40 federal investigators from the FBI, DEA, ATF, and Homeland Security Investigations Unit would be deployed in the 

Attorney General Barr

city, and 26 of them would remain in Memphis for the foreseeable future.

The federal investigators were to work with ongoing investigations through the Multi-Agency Gang Unit, the goal of which is to combat violent gangs, gun crime, and drug trafficking organizations.

Operation LeGend was launched in Kansas City, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis; and Indianapolis, Indiana.

Here are some stats on the operation in Memphis, shared by Barr’s office Tuesday:

• 266 arrests

• 124 charged with federal offenses

• 53 for drug crimes

• 46 for gun crimes

• 24 for violent crimes like carjacking, business robbery, and using a firearm during a violent crime

• 210 firearms were seized

• $670,270 in criminal proceeds were seized

Here’s a list of the drugs that were seized:

• 31,063 grams of methamphetamine

• 1,572 grams of cocaine

• 4,665 grams of fentanyl

• 5,021 grams of heroin

• 9,205 grams of marijuana

• 2,822 pills of various controlled substances, primarily opioids

Here’s a list of the grants brought here by Operation LeGend:

• City of Memphis Police Department — $9,823,624 (COPS Hiring Program funds, to hire 50 new officers)

• Shelby County Sheriff’s Office — $1,628,571 (Operation Relentless Pursuit/Operation LeGend)

• Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office — $398,864 (Project Guardian)

U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant

U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said the efforts have “undoubtedly saved lives.”

“Although this marks the end of the formal [Department of Justice] Operation LeGend initiative, we will continue our targeted enforcement actions and coordination in the future with the federal agents permanently reassigned to Memphis, as well as our LeGend Task Force model,” Dunavant said. “Despite rising violent crime rates in 2020, as a result of Operation LeGend, drug traffickers, trigger-pullers, gang members, and violent offenders are going to prison, law enforcement is energized, and the public is better protected.”

Categories
News News Blog

Trump Gun Violence Plan Panned as ‘Toothless’

@KerriKupecDO/Twitter

U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr launches Project Guardian in Memphis Wednesday.

The Trump Adminstration’s new gun-violence-reduction initiative announced here Wednesday is “toothless,” according to a gun-violence-reduction advocacy group.

U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr used Memphis as his backdrop to launch Project Guardian, a program that “focuses on investigating, prosecuting, and preventing gun crimes.” Memphis earned the announcement, it seemed, as Barr described the city’s gun violence levels as stubborn, more than five times higher than the national average.

Little is new in Project Guardian. For it, “the department reviewed and adapted some of the successes of past strategies to curb gun violence,” according to a DOJ news release. The project redoubles coordination between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

For this, Brady, the gun-violence-reduction group, said the new plan does not go far enough. The group was named for Jim Brady, Ronald Regan’s press secretary who was shot during an assassination attempt on the president.

“It focuses only on enforcement and increased policing, making no serious effort to address the supply of guns and how they fall into the hands of individuals who have proven themselves a danger to themselves or to others,” said Brady president Kris Brown. “Gun violence is a complex situation and we need policies that address its many facets and underlying causes.

“The Trump administration’s proposed initiative will expand policing initiatives already in place, while making no substantive effort to address common-sense and bipartisan policies like expanded background checks and enactment of extreme risk protection orders (sometimes referred to as ‘red flag laws’), which Americans of both parties support.”

Project Guardian draws on past DOJ “successes” like the Triggerlock program, a 90s-era program that put law enforcement agencies filtering gang and drug cases looking for federal weapons violations. The program also draws from the Project Safe Neighborhoods program, a federal program underway in Memphis now that coordinates all strata of law enforcement to prosecute violent offenders.

“Under the new Project Guardian initiative, we will intensify our focus on removing firearms from the hands of prohibited persons, and removing dangerous offenders from our streets,” said Michael Dunavant, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. “We are excited to coordinate the implementation of this initiative with our state and local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal firearms laws.

“Rest assured that, with Project Guardian, we will aggressively prosecute the trigger-pullers, traffickers, straw purchasers, and prohibited persons who illegally possess firearms in West Tennessee.”

DOJ officials boiled Project Guardian down to five parts:

1. Coordinated prosecution: Federal prosecutors and law enforcement will coordinate with state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecutors to consider potential federal prosecution for new cases involving a defendant who: (a) was arrested in possession of a firearm; (b) is believed to have used a firearm in committing a crime of violence or drug trafficking crime prosecutable in federal court; or (c) is suspected of actively committing violent crime(s) in the community on behalf of a criminal organization.

2. Enforcing the background check system:
United States Attorneys, in consultation with the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in their district, will create new, or review existing, guidelines for intake and prosecution of federal cases involving false statements (including lie-and-try, lie-and-buy, and straw purchasers) made during the acquisition or attempted acquisition of firearms from Federal Firearms Licensees.

3. Improved information sharing: On a regular basis, and as often as practicable given current technical limitations, ATF will provide to state law enforcement fusion centers a report listing individuals for whom the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has issued denials, including the basis for the denial, so that state and local law enforcement can take appropriate steps under their laws.

4. Coordinated response to mental health denials: Each United States Attorney will ensure that whenever there is federal case information regarding individuals who are prohibited from possessing a firearm under the mental health prohibition, such information continues to be entered timely and accurately into the United States Attorneys’ Offices’ case-management system for prompt submission to NICS.

5. Crime gun intelligence coordination: Federal, state, local, and tribal prosecutors and law enforcement will work together to ensure effective use of the ATF’s Crime Gun Intelligence Centers (CGICs), and all related resources, to maximize the use of modern intelligence tools and technology.

For Brady officials, Project Guardian does not get to the core of gun violence — the supply of weapons across the country. Two bills passed by the U.S. House that would do that are “languishing” on the desk of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to Brady.

“Instead, the Trump administration has in fact expanded access to firearms, including for individuals deemed dangerous or who should not possess a gun,” said Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at Brady. “Shame on them. These bills will save lives and every day they sit on Sen. McConnell’s desk approximately 100 Americans die from gun violence. That responsibility lies with the Majority Leader and the President. That blood is on their hands.”

As the news conference on Project Guardian closed, reporters asked Barr about the impeachment hearings (underway during the news conference). Local 24 reporter Brad Broders live-tweeted the questions:

Trump Gun Violence Plan Panned as ‘Toothless’

Trump Gun Violence Plan Panned as ‘Toothless’ (2)

Trump Gun Violence Plan Panned as ‘Toothless’ (3)

Trump Gun Violence Plan Panned as ‘Toothless’ (4)

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

I Dreamed I Was Flying …

I’ve gotten lots of emails in the past few days. Many are gloating, “told you so, liberal scum” type deals. Others are from my fellow liberal scum suggesting that we “accept the findings of the Mueller Report and move on.” Only one problem with either of these suggestions: We haven’t seen the Mueller Report. In fact, Senator Mitch McConnell just blocked Senator Chuck Schumer’s proposal to replicate the House of Representatives’ unanimous vote to release the report.

Listen, people, it’s too early gloat, and it’s too early to lament. We have no idea what’s really in that report. Just chill. And bear in mind, if the report was really a good thing for Trump, the GOP would be passing it out on street corners and using it to sell MAGA hats, not trying to keep it under wraps. Don’t buy the “Trump is exonerated” line until we get to see the actual report and not a brief, butt-covering summation by Trump’s hand-picked attorney general. Stay woke.

And for the record, if the actual report proves that Trump was nothing more than an innocent but useful idiot in the (very real) Russian interference in the 2016 election, and not a knowing collaborator, I will say so in this column. Then you can gloat.

In the meantime, savor these words from Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” written during the darkest days of the Watergate era. Even better, go listen to it. Turn it up.

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
But I’m all right, I’m all right
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home

And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hour
and sing an American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

No Backing Down. Release the Mueller Report.

Yes, we are dismayed, but not for the reasons you might think. We are not troubled by any imagined derelictions of the mainstream media or by any presumed credulousness on its part or by any putative conspiracy, in tandem with the Democratic Party, to mislead the nation about a fictitious involvement of Donald Trump, his campaign, or his administration with the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin.

What concerns us instead is the tail-between-the-legs attitude of some of our brethren in the Fourth Estate, or the chastisement of fellow journalists by the likes of The New York Times‘ David Brooks or gonzo progressive Matt Taibbi.

No, we have nothing to apologize for, those of us who pointed out the practical symbiosis between the Trump campaign and administration and the organized conspiracy of the Russian government to undermine both our democratic (small d) processes and the electoral chances of the Democratic Party.

No, we were not deceived, and we had no difficulty discerning a pattern in the ever-proliferating number of relationships between the Trumpians and the Russians, even if, bafflingly, special counsel Robert Mueller, who unearthed so many of them, supposedly did. (And we pause here to observe that, in these first few days of shocked reaction to the hands-off conclusions attributed to the Mueller report, what is being reacted to is William Barr’s summary of that report, an interpretation of its contents by an attorney general hired by Trump, in effect, to serve as the personal presidential lawyer that Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first AG, declined to be.)

Michael Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser, did have conversations with Russian officials, which he later lied about, promising them relief from sanctions properly applied by former President Barack Obama. He pleaded guilty.

Earlier, Trump’s most intimate campaign assistants, including a son, a son-in-law, and his campaign manager Paul Manafort, took a meeting — in Trump Tower in New York, no less — with Russian emissaries who promised them help with the campaign and dirt on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Even earlier than that, Manafort had agreed to share the campaign’s polling information with a Russian oligarch close to Putin, and presumably close also to the cyber-sabotage being organized and conducted by Russians, a dozen of whom would go on to be indicted at Mueller’s behest.

It goes on and on, the litany of relationships and the network of lies told in both countries to conceal them. In more recent weeks we have learned about Trump’s hopes for an extravagant payoff from Putin via the Russian dictator’s approval of a Trump Tower to be built in Moscow.

We have all been lessoned as to the fact that the word “collusion,” indicating an intimate working relationship, is not a legal term. Fine, we accept it for what it is, an indication of an intimate working relationship. And everything we have just described, along with much more that we don’t have space for here, is collusion on the face of it. We — and others in the media — have nothing to apologize for in having pointed this out. Let the American people know the truth, one way or the other. Release the Mueller report.