(WWJ) The Trump Administration has announced that federal law enforcement agents will be deployed to Detroit as part of "Operation Legend."
A statement on the White House website says in the next three weeks agents will be in Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee to help apprehend violent criminals.
This comes after President Donald Trump said federal officers would be going to Chicago and Albuquerque, New Mexico as part of the push, which was named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro who was shot and killed in his bed after a gunman opened fire on an apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri last month. On Tuesday, unmarked federal officers in green camouflage uniforms took people into custody on the streets of Portland, Oregon.
The Justice Department will provide more than $61 million to hire hundreds of new police officers, the government said.
Trump said around 200 federal agents and deputy marshals will be permanently reassigned to the involved cities.
As for what the officers will be doing, the White House says the move is designed to "help curb the kind of senseless violence" that led to Taliferro's death.
"My first duty as President is to protect the American people, and today I am taking action to fulfill that sacred obligation," President Trump said.
In a joint statement issued early this week, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Police Chief James Craig said they don't want help from the feds.
"Neither the City of Detroit nor the Detroit Police Department has had any contact from any representative of the federal government about any plans to sends DHS officers to Detroit. There could be no possible justification for such an action. The Detroit Police Department has had the support of the Detroit community in making sure our city did not have a single store looted or a single fire started during the protests," the statement reads.
"Unlike nearly every other major city in the country, the Detroit Police Department never requested assistance from the National Guard - we handled our issues as a community. We definitely have no need for any federal presence being sent in now."
Asked about the federal officers on Wednesday, the mayor reiterated that he does not believe they are needed in Detroit.
"We made the decision early on that the bond between the Detroit Police Department and this community was strong enough that we could handle the protests ourselves," Duggan told reporters. "And I think so far we get up every day and we work it hard. We haven't had any stores looted; we haven't had any fires stated."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel also oppose the move; Whitmer contending that Trump "doesn't know the first thing about Detroit."
