Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has requested President Joe Biden send federal troops to her city amid a rising crime wave, an offer she previously rejected under former President Donald Trump.
Lightfoot, who greeted Biden at the O’Hare International Airport on Wednesday, petitioned the president for assistance after Chicago saw more than 100 shootings over the Independence Day weekend, the deadliest weekend so far this year.
“This morning, we woke up to a city that is reeling yet again from another night of violence—this time not just against our residents, but against those who are sworn to protect us,” the mayor said in a statement about the shootings, which included at least 13 children and three police officers. “We must be united and all in the this together. Everyone from the federal government on down must do their part to address this scourge of violence.”
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Lightfoot’s request came after she asked Trump not to send federal agents to the city last July, saying it would “spell disaster.”
“What we do not need, and what will certainly make our community less safe is secret, federal agents deployed to Chicago,” she wrote in a letter last summer obtained by WBEZ. “Any other form of militarized assistance within our borders that would not be within our control or within the direct command of the Chicago Police Department would spell disaster.”
The Democratic mayor added that such action would endanger her residents.
Her comments this week echo a plea she made to Biden last week for the federal government to step in following another deadly Chicago weekend.
“This is a national problem,” she said last Tuesday.
“Cities individually cannot tackle this problem. We just cannot. In Chicago, we’ve done absolutely everything possible, and we need help from the federal government,” the mayor added. “When guns are so porous that they can come across our borders as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence.”
The Department of Justice recently announced it would be sending a strike force to Chicago and other violent cities across the country to quell gun violence.
The strike forces “will investigate and disrupt the networks that channel crime guns into our communities with tragic consequences.”
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“This effort reflects our shared commitment to keep communities safe,” the department announced last month.
