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Multiple police union leaders have requested or supported federal law enforcement assistance to counter rising rates of violent crime in their cities, including in Charlotte, where the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska drew national attention. But, at least one union leader reversed course after city officials rejected the idea as illegal and unnecessary.
On Thursday, the Fraternal Order of Police in Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County became the latest police union to invite the National Guard, having sent a letter to city leaders requesting federal law enforcement assistance after the city faced 15 murders in roughly a month. Prior to Charlotte, police unions from Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., also signaled support for the deployment of federal law enforcement by the Trump administration.
The leader of Milwaukee’s Police Association, Alex Ayala, indicated last month he planned to request that the Trump administration bring federal troops and law enforcement officials to his city. However, he later walked the claim back following pushback from city leaders, calling the request a violation of federal law and unnecessary.
D.C. was one of the first major metropolitan cities in a series this summer that saw an infusion of federal law enforcement officials to help with crime. At the time, city leaders, like Mayor Muriel Bowser, similarly pushed back on whether federal assistance in the nation’s capital to help with crime was necessary.
“I want the message to be clear to the Congress, we have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city,” Bowser told reporters earlier this summer when Trump began cracking down on crime in D.C. “We don’t need a presidential emergency.”
In addition to Charlotte, Milwaukee and D.C., the National Police Association has also expressed support for the Trump administration’s federal deployment to help with violent crime in major metropolitan areas.
“This isn’t politics—it’s a fight for our neighbors’ lives. On August 22nd, Iryna Zarutska was savagely cut down on a Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) train, and since then, 15 more Charlottean’s have been gunned down in our streets,” the Charlotte-Mecklenburg FOP said in a post on Facebook Friday. “Just yesterday, two lives were lost in a double homicide—and a 16-year-old murdered in a busy Uptown shopping district. Our Uptown beat is reeling from nearly a 200% spike in homicides year-to-date compared to last year.”
“I think it’s a great strategy for the president to bring in the National Guard along with other federal resources to Memphis to show the rest of the country that what happened in Washington, D.C. can work in other cities like Memphis and beyond,” National Police Association spokesperson Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith added in regard to federal officials being deployed to Tennessee’s second-largest city, Memphis.
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