President Donald Trump’s law-and-order campaign became a part of his inaugural address when he said “this American carnage stops right here and right now.” A similar, apocalyptic refrain echoed through the first night of the Republican National Convention and promises to be a recurring theme this week, reports USA Today. Donald Trump Jr. told the convention, “Anarchists have been flooding our streets and Democrat mayors are ordering the police to stand down.” Said his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, “When you are in trouble and need police, don’t count on the Democrats.” Mark McCloskey, who made news when he and his wife emerged from their St. Louis home brandishing firearms to confront protesters, said Democrats “no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens.”
The Trump administration began using the law-and-order message weeks before the convention, launching Operation Legend, a national violent crime crackdown that has spread to nine U.S. cities. Federal officials say they’ve assisted in the arrests of 17 murder suspects in Kansas City, including a man accused in the slaying of 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro, for whom the strategy is named. Nationwide, nearly 1,500 suspects have been swept up in Kansas City, Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Memphis and St. Louis. Despite the encouraging numbers, some uneasy local officials have refused to embrace the strategy, fearing that their cities have been co-opted by a sagging presidential campaign seeking a law-and-order theme. “The reason this has been rolled out on a national scale is because we are in an election year,” said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas. “The coronavirus response doesn’t seem to be polling well for them, so they have moved to something else that they can try to do something about. They are trying to make crime a partisan issue.”