CLEVELAND — On Friday, Mayor Frank Jackson and the Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams will hold a joint news conference to address the recent announcement that federal law enforcement agents are coming to Cleveland as part of Operation Legend, a law enforcement effort named after 4-year-old LeGend Taliferro who was shot and killed last month in Kansas City.
The news conference will begin at 11:30 a.m. Watch it live in the media player below:
Cleveland Public Safety Director Karrie Howard is also expected to speak.
Less than two weeks following the boy’s death, Attorney General Bill Barr announced the creation of Operation Legend. Following that, more than 200 federal law enforcement agents were sent to Kansas City to help “curb the kind of senseless violence that took the young boy’s life,” according to The White House.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced the expansion of the operation to additional cities with a timetable of around three weeks.
“My first duty as President is to protect the American people, and today I am taking action to fulfill that sacred obligation,” Trump said.
According to The White House, the Justice Department will expand the program into Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Albuquerque and Milwaukee soon.
Ward 7 Cleveland City Councilman Basheer Jones said he would support federal agents coming to Cleveland "if they're here to work with the police and help us make our community safer." However, he said, "Right now, it just feels like a political ploy."
Jones said that residents in his community are already "heavily policed in certain instances, and there's already this divide that we're trying to mend between police and community. We don't want this to be something where people are coming into our community unidentified, arresting people, stopping people, and continuing to increase the divide between community and police."
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