By Christina Carrega, Priya Krishnakumar, Omar Jimenez and Evan Perez, CNN 7/22/2021
DOJ creates gun trafficking strike forces in five cities to crack down on sources of firearm-related crime
Attorney General Merrick Garland plans to travel to Chicago on Thursday to highlight the Justice Department's new anti-gun trafficking initiative focused on five cities, as the Biden administration faces political pressure to deal with spikes in crime.
The department launched anti-gun trafficking strike forces to be based in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, the San Francisco Bay area and Washington, DC, which are known corridors where illegal guns are being trafficked and used in deadly shootings and other crimes.
The strike forces will be "focused on disrupting illegal firearms trafficking networks," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told CNN's Brianna Keilar.
"We obviously always want to go after the individual who is pulling the trigger that's costing lives in our communities, but we also need to go after the networks, the very illegal trafficking networks that are putting those guns in the hands of those criminals in the first place," Monaco said Thursday on CNN's "New Day."
The goal is to better coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across jurisdictions to disrupt trafficking networks from the place where guns originate, where they travel through other jurisdictions, and to the places where they're ultimately used to commit violent crime, according to a Justice Department official.
More:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/22/politics/doj-anti-gun-trafficking-initiative/index.html
