The death of a 4-year-old boy in Kansas City, Missouri, earlier this year sparked the creation of a federal law enforcement initiative that bears his name.
As U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced this week, Operation LeGend is aimed at getting violent criminals off the streets — and it is starting to get results, according to the Washington Examiner.
“Many hundreds of innocent lives”
LeGend Taliferro was fatally shot while asleep in his home on June 29. A suspect has since been arrested on counts including second-degree murder.
“For us, LeGend is a symbol of the many hundreds of innocent lives that have been taken in the recent upsurge in crime in many of our urban areas,” Barr said.
Asserting that Taliferro’s “life mattered, and the lives of all of those victims mattered,” the attorney general went on to urge citizens to unite against the uptick in destructive and violent crime across the nation over recent months.
“His name should be remembered, and his senseless death, like those of all the other victims in this recent surge, should be unacceptable to all Americans,” Barr said.
A U.S. Department of Justice statement that was released in unison with Barr’s remarks provided some statistics to back up his praise of the operation’s early success.
“Charged in state and local courts”
“Since the operation’s launch, there have been more than 1,000 arrests, including defendants who have been charged in state and local courts,” it boasted.
The operation has grown to include law enforcement agencies in nine cities. Results for Indianapolis, Indiana, were not included in the most recent results, however, since it was only recently added to the federal program.
“Of those arrests, approximately 217 defendants have been charged with federal crimes,” the Justice Department confirmed.
Authorities with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives have also reportedly confiscated nearly 400 firearms as part of the operation.
Lamenting that a troubling trend has “been going on for almost 30 years” in much of the U.S., Barr expressed optimism that “this could be a bad year for violent crime” because of Operation LeGend’s efforts. Law-abiding citizens from coast to coast are united in their hope that he is right.
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