(Washington) The Republican government of Donald Trump on Wednesday announced the dispatch of federal agents to three new US cities, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee, led by Democrats, to help them stem an upsurge in crime .
Posted on 29 July 2020 at 11 h 21 Updated to 11 h 18
France Media Agency
“These three cities are experiencing a disturbing increase in violent crime, particularly homicides”, justified in a statement the Minister of Justice Bill Barr, much criticized by the opposition for having dispatched federal police officers to Portland, in Oregon, where these agents clash with anti-racist protesters every night.
PHOTO MANDEL NGAN, AFP
Bill Barr
In parallel with this controversial intervention in Portland, the Republican administration launched an operation in several Democratic cities prone to an increase in gun violence, Kansas City, Chicago or Albuquerque.
This will be extended to the three large industrial cities of the Great Lakes region, where a hundred agents will be dispatched in the coming weeks, according to the ministry, which deplores an increase in homicides of 13% in Cleveland, 30% in Detroit and 85% in Milwaukee since the beginning of the year.
The elected officials of these cities have already expressed their reservations about these deployments which come as Donald Trump, vying for his re-election on November 3, is posing as a candidate of “law and order”.
“The recent conduct of federal agents in Portland, Oregon has caused serious concern in Milwaukee and Wisconsin about the purpose and scope of a federal law enforcement mission. in our city and our state ”, wrote in particular Tuesday in anticipation of the elected local Democrats to the federal prosecutor of the district.
Federal agents deployed to Portland will begin their withdrawal on Thursday
The government of Donald Trump has agreed to gradually withdraw, from 29 July, the agents Federals deployed to Portland, Democratic Oregon State Governor Kate Brown said on Wednesday.
“After discussions with the vice president and administration officials, the federal government has accepted my request and will begin to withdraw its agents,” Ms. Brown wrote in a statement.
Acting Homeland Security Minister Chad Wolf, for his part, said in a statement that his services “will continue to maintain our additional law enforcement personnel in Portland until we are sure. That the court and other federal sites “will no longer be attacked.”
“This has been our mission and our goal since these violent, criminal activities started,” he says.
Since the arrival of these police officers in early July, the anti-racist demonstrations organized for two months in this large city in the north-west have become very tense and clashes have taken place every night near the federal court. Just Tuesday, the Minister of Justice Bill Barr justified this intervention intended according to him to put an end to “riots”, painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation.
Governor Kate Brown has a radically different interpretation of the facts: “These federal police officers acted as an occupying force, refused to account and brought violence and conflict to our city”, accuses- she
The death of George Floyd, black forty-something asphyxiated on 24 May in Minneapolis by a police officer white, sparked huge anti-racist protests across the United States. Mobilization weakened considerably, but pockets of protest persisted, especially in Portland, a city clearly marked on the left and with a strong history of protest.
The deployment of federal agents, sometimes from customs or border police and wearing a whole military panoply, had the effect of hardening the movement in Portland.
