The president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatens to impose his control over the cities of Democratic majority that considers hostile territory. After having already taken that step in Washington, it does not seem a rhetorical alert. This Monday has signed an executive order in which you instructions to the Pentagon to increase military role in citizen security tasks. The Department of Defense will have to train the National Guard in each state for tasks such as “quelling civil disturbances and guaranteeing public safety.”
In addition, in each state the National Guard will have to have a “reasonable number” of soldiers “that can mobilize quickly and attend in that type of missions. This body will have to establish a rapid intervention group that can quickly move to the different other states, indicates the order, titled” Additional measures to stop crime in the Columbia district. “
In the case of the capital, the National Guard must create units specifically dedicated to “guarantee public security and order”. The National Guard is a military force formed in each state by citizens with civil jobs and that fulfill military functions a few days a month, although that period can be extended in case of emergency of some kind.
This force already has a quick response group that can respond in emergencies where some type of security support is necessary. That device, which is activated for example in cases of natural catastrophes, can mobilize between 75 and 125 soldiers in eight hours, and another 375 in 24 hours. The US federal legislation establishes that the National Guard can be activated in cases of “crisis or natural disasters, or in special events when local, tribal and state capacities are exceeded, exhausted or not available.”
The president can also put the National Guard under his direct control, as he did in Los Angeles in June, when he mobilized this body in California despite the rejection of Governor Gavin Newsom during protests against Trump’s immigration policy.
The law Posse commitatusof 1878, prohibits US troops from developing police functions on national soil. But another law allows the National Guard to be deployed in a series of cases, including a rebellion against the federal government.
Contingency plans
American media have published that the Pentagon already prepares contingency plans on how a deployment would develop in Chicago, if Trump finally fulfills his threat of deploying the National Guard in the city of the winds.
Speaking from the oval office during the signing ceremony of the order, Trump has pointed out that the country’s troops are ready to deploy in any city “in less than 24 hours.”
The US president has been threatening throughout the last two weeks with imposing similar measures to those of Washington in other cities under the control of the Democratic opposition, and with the same argument as in the capital: that crime in them, according to him, is out of control and equals a national emergency. In previous days he had specifically mentioned Chicago and New York; This Sunday he extended his proposal to Baltimore, in Maryland, after the governor of that state, Wes Moore, invited him to tour the streets of that port with him.
In his statements on Monday, the president has not made clear if he truly considers some kind of measure against Chicago. “If we go, we leave it resolved in a week,” he promised, on the one hand. On the other, he argued that he will only intervene if they ask for it.
The president ordered two weeks ago the deployment of the National Guard in the US capital and putting the local police under federal control. At first, 800 soldiers began to patrol the streets – mainly in charge of monumental surveillance, tourist places and the metro network – although that amount has almost tripled, reinforced by contingents arriving from six republican majority states. Since Sunday night, these military have begun to carry weapons, although initially it had been ensured that they would be unarmed.
“We can go anywhere in less than 24 hours,” Trump answered to journalists’ questions about whether he considers asking the Pentagon to send a contingent to the metropolis of the great lakes. Chicago said, “You need help. We can expect. You may, or may not, perhaps we simply go and do it, which is probably what we would have to do,” added the president.
In the signing ceremony on Monday, Trump also promulgated another executive order to prohibit freedom on free bail, in which the defendant does not have to deposit any amount of money as a guarantee that he will not flee before his trial.
Several states, and the city of Washington, offer that modality. The defenders of that measure claim that they avoid imposing an economic burden on people who often have to pay it. Their critics, among them, high positions of the White House, consider that the one that the bail comes out free to eliminate incentives so that the defendants appear in their judgments and encourage them to recidivate.
In his statements, the US president insisted that the taking of control over the security of the capital has solved, in a matter of days, the problem of crime, which he considered completely runaway. He has stressed that since his order no murder has been perpetrated in Washington. As he said, it is something that “had not happened in years” in such a extensive period, two weeks. A false statement: although the level of homicides in the capital is above the national average, so far this year there have been fortnights in which no violent deaths have been recorded.
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