The surge of federal agents who have arrived in the city to help Chicago police fight violence as part of Operation Legend will go as far as handing out business cards to residents and community leaders as a way of encouraging neighborhoods to work with law enforcement, Chicago’s top FBI official said Friday.
Emmerson Buie Jr., the FBI special-agent-in-charge of its Chicago office, made the announcement Friday during a rare news briefing at the bureau’s Near West Side headquarters, attended by reporters abiding by social-distancing rules in a conference room.
Buie sought to reassure the public that agents want to work with residents to fight violence plaguing their neighborhoods as part of the new push, announced last month by President Donald Trump. Word of the plan sparked concern Chicago could see the kind of controversial force used to tamp down protests in cities including Portland, Oregon, in recent weeks.
The plan is for agents to fight crime as they always have, Buie told reporters.
“Operation Legend is new, but the fight is the same,” he said.
In the next few weeks, Buie said agents would be handing out business cards to Chicago residents and community leaders, urging them to use 1-800-CALL-FBI, a tip line for the public to provide confidential information about crimes in their neighborhoods.
He would not disclose how long the influx of federal agents would last but said there would eventually be an “evaluation of resources” to determine its sunset.
Operation Legend was named in honor of slain 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro in Kansas City, Missouri, where it began. In Chicago, it involves a few hundred federal agents from myriad agencies, among them the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals Service.
In addition to Chicago and Kansas City, Operation Legend covers St. Louis, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis and Milwaukee. Officials have said each city has endured violence spikes in the wake of unrest after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota on May 25, an incident that has drawn national outrage.
As part of the effort in Chicago, the federal government has pledged to earmark $3.5 million to reimburse the Chicago Police Department and the city for the work done on the operation by local cops.
Aside from Operation Legend, Chicago police and other big-city police departments routinely work with federal law enforcement on criminal investigations into gang violence and gun- and drug-trafficking. Such partnerships over the years have included Project Exile, aimed at shifting more gun prosecutions to federal court for tougher penalties, and Project Safe Neighborhoods, designed to better coordinate federal resources and local intelligence on crime.
Chicago police sources have told the Tribune the latest surge in federal agents is expected to mean more of an emphasis on going after felons repeatedly caught with illegal guns.
Buie also reiterated an announcement made last month that the FBI would be offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the July 4 slaying of 14-year-old Vernado Jones Jr. in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood. He was one of four people slain in a shooting at 62nd and Carpenter streets that also left four wounded.
Buie described Vernado’s death as having a personal effect on him, since he grew up in the Englewood area.
“I was a young man playing in (that) same neighborhood,” he said.
![Claudia Perez’s children could count on one hand the number of times they had seen their father cry. The day their mother left was one of them. Perez had worked her whole life for a dream that did not come true: Save enough money to take her family back to Mexico and live together in the town where they were all born. Instead, on a cold February day, she stepped onto a bus in Brighton Park and said goodbye, making the difficult choice between her loved ones in Mexico and her family in Chicago. “Don’t leave my love. No te […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ctc-VHR5442_183545767.jpg?w=525 "Claudia Perez’s children could count on one hand the number of times they had seen their father cry. The day their mother left was one of them. Perez had worked her whole life for a dream that did not come true: Save enough money to take her family back to Mexico and live together in the town where they were all born. Instead, on a cold February day, she stepped onto a bus in Brighton Park and said goodbye, making the difficult choice between her loved ones in Mexico and her family in Chicago. “Don’t leave my love. No te […]")