Erika D. Smith: The crackdown on cities will actually make them less safe

As President Donald Trump continues to talk about sending federal agents – and National Guard troops – to the streets of Chicago and other American cities, many Democratic politicians have been falling back on one line to describe what’s happening: It’s a “dangerous power grab.”

But what Trump is doing to cities isn’t merely some high-minded, authoritarian affront to democracy, federalism or the Constitution. It’s also just plain dangerous.

By sending armed and, in some cases, insufficiently trained troops and employees from an alphabet soup of federal agencies on a vague mission to do the duties of beat cops, Trump is injecting an unpredictable new element into local law enforcement. And it’s a risk to public safety.

“There is not a world where we keep doing this, and there isn’t someone who dies as a result of the stupidly useless and manufactured confusion and disorganization caused as a direct result of injecting federal law enforcement into places where they do not have the training nor the interest in manufacturing trust with communities,” said Phillip Atiba Solomon, a co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity and a professor of African American studies and psychology at Yale University.

When we spoke recently, he ticked through some of the many ways that things could go wrong: What if a local cop, not knowing a federal immigration enforcement operation was underway in a neighborhood, opened fire on a masked agent, thinking he or she was a criminal? What would happen if that agent fired back? What if civilians got caught in the crossfire? Who would be at fault?

One big problem is the lack of communication among various government agencies. During a press conference on Tuesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, flanked by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, described having to rely on “unauthorized patriotic officials inside the government” and “well-sourced reporters” to understand what the Trump administration has planned for its crackdown on street crime and undocumented immigrants in America’s third-largest city.

“Sifting fact from fiction has been increasingly difficult because Donald Trump’s administration is not working in coordination with the city of Chicago, Cook County or the state of Illinois,” he said, adding that “fighting crime requires coordination.”

Pritzker’s words echoed those of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who said repeatedly over the summer that California Democrats were “governing by rumor,” trying to understand which federal agencies were operating in the city, how many Marines and National Guard troops were being deployed, what their mission would be and how long it would last.

Another big problem – made worse by the lack of communication and coordination – is that different law enforcement agencies follow different protocols and training standards, covering everything from when it’s appropriate to engage in a car chase to whether it’s permitted to hide one’s identity, as federal immigration agents can and local police often cannot.

When residents don’t know what to expect from law enforcement, it can lead to some dangerous situations and, indeed, already has in Southern California. Last month, masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement forced a driver, Francisco Longoria, to the side of the road, surrounded his truck, broke a window and, as a bystander’s video showed, appeared to shoot at him as he drove off. Not knowing the masked men were federal agents, his family called 911. Local police were in the dark. The Department of Homeland Security hasn’t said much, other than that it’s a “developing situation.”

Such tactics fly in the face of how many city police departments have been reformed in recent years to repair frayed relationships with residents. Officers now must wear body cameras to provide more transparency, adhere to stricter rules on when and how to use force on suspects, and generally undergo more training.

The Trump administration is moving in the opposite direction by lowering standards and training for new hires. In its zeal to quickly hire and deploy 10,000 more agents to help carry out mass deportations, for example, ICE has eliminated a requirement for new recruits to learn Spanish, shortening training by five weeks. It has also begun allowing 18-year-olds to apply, when the previous cutoff was 21.

The FBI is looking to follow suit under a plan pushed by the agency’s director, Kash Patel. New hires would no longer need college degrees and would receive eight weeks of training, down from 18 weeks, as the agency shifts from conducting national security investigations toward fighting street crime, as part of operations like the one under way in Washington.

Trump would argue that what he’s doing is necessary to reduce crime. And indeed, by flooding Washington, D.C., with federal agents and troops, there have been some short-term successes, including a marked decrease in carjackings. Even Mayor Muriel Bowser has acknowledged as much and, this week, issued an executive order requiring local police to cooperate with federal law enforcement indefinitely.

However, on Thursday, Washington’s elected attorney general, Brian Schwalb, sued the Trump administration over the deployment of the National Guard, calling it “dangerous and harmful” to have the military involved in civilian law enforcement. His words echo those of Johnson, who recently signed an executive order that prohibits Chicago police from cooperating with National Guard troops or federal agents if Trump deploys them.

What will other blue cities do if Trump comes for them?

It’s doubtful they will follow Bowser’s example, as she is likely calculating that resisting Trump would accomplish little given Washington’s uniquely limited ability to do so. Other Democratic mayors (and governors) have better legal arguments to resist Trump and every incentive to burnish their political profiles by doing so.

Long-term, though, this sort of partisan maneuvering over public safety could lead to people getting hurt, or worse, killed. As Yale’s Solomon told me, “I see a day coming in the very near future, where even local cooperation does not protect us from the mass confusion that’s happening.”

Americans should be as worried about that as they are about crime – before it’s too late.