Federal, state, and local authorities have bagged 1,000 criminals and charged more than 200 with federal crimes in the nationwide law-enforcement effort called Operation Legend, which was begun after the shooting death of a little boy in Kansas City.
The operation, named for LeGend Taliferro, a four-year-old killed by gunfire as he slept, was announced last month and sent hundreds of federal agents into crime-ridden cities to help state and local police fight violent crime.
The arrests are unrelated to the wave of nationwide terror attacks involving arson, vandalism, and outright attempted murder by the Marxist radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
Last week, cops arrested a suspect in Taliferro’s murder.
The Crimes
Operation Legend began July 8 and is a “sustained, systematic and coordinated law enforcement initiative across all federal law enforcement agencies working in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials,” the Justice Department announced at the time.
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Since beginning in Kansas City, the department rolled out the program to Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.
The feds have charged 217 with federal crimes and seized 400 firearms.
The city-by-city rundown of arrests, with some defendants facing multiple charges, includes these, the department announced:
Chicago — 61
• 34, firearms offenses;
• 26, narcotics;
• One, possession of machine gun;
• One, illegally dealing firearms without a license;
• One, illegal sale of firearm to prohibited person; and
• One, bank fraud.
Kansas City — 43
• 17, homicide charges;
• 20, felon in possession of a firearm;
• 17, drug trafficking;
• 10, possession of a firearm in furtherance of violent crime or drug trafficking;
• Three, armed robbery
• One, arson; and
• One, carjacking.
Cleveland — 32
• 22, federal drug trafficking charges;
• Nine, federal firearms violations; and
• One, carjacking.
St. Louis — 25
• 21, drug trafficking offenses;
• One, drug trafficking and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime;
•One, felon in possession of a firearm;
• One, drug user in possession of a firearm;
• One, robbery.
Detroit — 22
• 14, felon in possession of a firearm;
• Two, possession with the intent to distribute controlled substances;
• Two, possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking;
• Three, receipt of a firearm while under indictment;
• Four, making false statement to a licensed firearm dealer; and
• Two, carjacking.
The Hobbs Act, passed in 1946 to combat labor racketeering, punishes robbery and extortion.
All the cities that required the federal assistance to control the violence have Democrat mayors.
Murder Suspect Arrested
In an unrelated arrest, cops collared 22-year-old Ryson Ellis last week in connection with the shooting death of Taliferro on June 29, the Kansas City Star reported.
Ellis attacked the apartment where Taliferro was sleeping, prosecutors allege, because Taliferro’s aunt told her brother that Ellis struck her. The brother — LeGend Taliferro’s father — confronted Ellis. Ellis was injured in the ensuing fight, the Star reported, and then went to the apartment, where the aunt was staying with her mother.
Prosecutors say Ellis “fired gunshots into [the apartment] … through a privacy fence and a sliding glass door.” The bullet struck Taliferro, who was sleeping.
As well, prosecutors allege, “a suspect vehicle was captured on surveillance video from the night of the shooting,” and the driver told prosecutors that Ellis “got out of the vehicle near apartment 123, then she heard gun shots. He came running back to the car. She said she didn’t find out until later someone had been killed.”
The driver heard a gun hit the floor when Ellis got back in the car, the Star reported.
Young Taliferro isn’t the only child to die in big-city urban violence, of course.
A seven-year-old girl died in a hail of lead in Chicago in July. A bullet fired during a hit on an outdoor party hit her in the forehead.
In June, a one-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl were killed. The little boy was on his way home from the laundromat with his mother when a car pulled up and someone opened fire.
The girl was in her apartment when a stray bullet crashed through the window and hit her in the head.
Image: P_Wei/iStock/Getty Images Plus
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
