Federal push against violent crime in Chicago underway - bypassing local prosecutors

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Federal push in Chicago begins to show up in new gun cases, some bypassing Cook County prosecutors

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The U.S. attorney’s office already has a gun crimes prosecution team that has embedded assistant U.S. attorneys in police districts on the South and West sides of the city to try and disrupt the cycle of violence in those neighborhoods.

But the effort has been stepped up significantly in recent weeks as civil unrest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis coupled with a wave of gun violence brought Chicago back into national headlines and drew the attention of the Trump administration, several law enforcement sources have told the Chicago Tribune.

The scope of the renewed federal push was being held close to the vest, but it has seemingly intensified once again as President Donald Trump recently sent more federal agents here in an expansion of what has been dubbed “Operation Legend,” which has seen leaders of the U.S. attorney’s office, the FBI and Chicago police trumpet their increased cooperation.

Gun violence has spiked this summer to levels not seen in years, claiming victims as young as 1 year old. Earlier this month a shooting outside a funeral home saw 15 people wounded — the worst mass shooting in recent Chicago memory. Some sources said an increase in the amount of federal resources paying attention to Chicago violence was likely to naturally lead to more federal prosecutions.

But the concerted push has apparently led to some confusion within the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which has historically handled the vast majority of Chicago gun felonies.

On July 25, just two days after Trump’s Operation Legend announcement, an email sent by a high-ranking prosecutor to attorneys in the Felony Review Unit said Chicago police would be taking all gun arrests to federal agents first, giving them the right of first refusal in deciding whether to bring charges.

State prosecutors were directed to consider charging a gun case only if federal prosecutors had declined it, according to the email, which was obtained by the Tribune.

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The reasons to charge a defendant in federal court vary, but prosecutors generally promote it as a tool to get the city’s most violent, repeat offenders off the street instead of putting them back into the Cook County justice system. The potential penalties also are typically much tougher.

Not only does the federal charge of unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon carry a maximum 10-year prison sentence, defendants must serve 85% of their sentence, instead of being eligible for day-for-day credit in the state system.

If a defendant has previously been convicted of three or more violent felonies, federal prosecutors can seek an enhanced, mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years behind bars, or up to life.

Defendants convicted at the federal level also may wind up serving their time in faraway states, which tough-on-crime advocates have long said can act as a deterrent in and of itself.

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