Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass recently accused the Trump administration of wanting to "go in primarily inner city communities and shoot people,” Breitbart reports. This baseless claim came in reaction to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's comments to law enforcement officers, where he emphasized that federal officers were now "unleashed" in the fight against rising crime and lawlessness in American cities.
Miller's remarks reflected a serious, no-nonsense federal approach to combating persistent crime issues that have plagued certain urban areas for years, especially those left neglected by local officials. The Biden administration has often been accused of neglecting law and order, and the Trump administration is taking decisive ac-tion to restore peace and security, particularly in areas that have been hotspots for violence.
Mayor Bass’s comments, however, seek to demonize the effort by distorting it as a license for violence against citizens.
“Let me just register that this is such a tragic moment in our history, and the experiment that started here has now gone to other cities and is now being generalized. I believe that they have been dosing the American people so that this becomes normalized behavior. The statements that were made to the military yesterday, acknowledging that we are going to experiment with our cities and use our cities as training grounds for warfare. So what that is saying is, is that the President of the United States wants to turn the U.S. Military against the American people and to tell law enforcement that they are now unleashed and they can use their guns, is essentially saying, go in primarily inner city communities and shoot people,” Bass said.
“So after years of trying to work on police reform, and that was an issue that I worked on when I was a member of Congress, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, to improve police and community relations, Stephen Miller just said, let’s antagonize it, because clearly this is only going to happen in certain communities,” she continued. “And this is just a tragic moment, and it’s a real challenge to our democracy and such a profoundly negative way.”
Critics argue that Democrats like Bass have focused on police reform rhetoric while failing to address the real public safety crises in their cities. The federal crackdown is seen by supporters as a necessary intervention to support local authorities overwhelmed by crime and civil unrest.