CHICAGO - Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments branding federal officers as "stormtroopers" are "sad," Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara Jr. stated Friday.
In an interview on "Outnumbered Overtime," he said he supposed Pelosi wanted law enforcement to just ask, "Pretty please, can you turn yourself in? Can you stop being bad?"
"I mean, what does she know about law enforcement or anything about even laws at this point? She is so past her prime and it's just sad. It's really sad to watch," he asserted.
This week President Trump announced he would send hundreds of additional federal agents to cities, hoping to quell the country's recent spike in violent crime over the last few weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic and protests over the death of George Floyd.
The plan is called Operation Legend: named for 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was killed in his sleep in Kansas City, Mo., at the end of June.
While there is already a federal presence in Portland, Ore., and Kansas City, the operation will send members of the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service and other agencies partnering with local law enforcement to help combat deadly crime in Catanzara's Windy City.
Additionally, a "surge" of officers will head to Albuquerque, N.M.
“This bloodshed must end,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “This bloodshed will end.”
Pelosi took to Twitter to voice her disapproval of the response, accusing “unidentified” officers of “kidnapping” protesters – a claim the Department of Homeland Security denies.
“The use of stormtroopers under the guise of law and order is a tactic that is not appropriate to our country in any way,” she wrote Thursday.
However, Catanzara argued that the average Chicago resident would not really notice "any difference" because there are already federal agents there doing the work and the justice system needs their help.
"Our justice system in Cook County is absolutely terrible, to say the least. The chief judge gives almost no bonds...The Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has our ankle monitor program that is absolutely laughable," he remarked.
"So, again, these criminals face no repercussions for their bad behavior from here. So, we need the federal help to actually have a little more punch to what's going on," Catanzara said.
The police leader pointed to Chicago's homicide rate.
"New York is two-and-a-half times the population of Chicago, yet we still have 40 percent more murders than New York. I mean, just let that number sink in. The violence in this city is unique to anywhere else in this country," he noted. "And, this mayor has no better grasp than the previous mayor."
"It's never going away because all they want to do is keep making excuses for bad behavior [and] pretend that the people doing this are some Martians from outer space and they disappear back off [Earth] for the night after they commit the violence," Catanzara said of Chicago's Democratic leadership. "They want to talk about the guns instead of [who is] pulling the triggers, or the politicians and the people charged with law enforcement not keeping them in jail where they should be."
"It falls on the Cook County justice system," he concluded.
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