Daily Herald opinion: A serious strategy against urban crime would involve collaboration, planning

With his usual blend of big talk, impromptu prattle and indefinite musing, President Donald Trump has been making vacillating noises in recent weeks about sending National Guard troops to Chicago to, somehow, fight crime.

But he may have accidentally hit on something worthy of discussion in remarks from the Oval Office on Monday.

“In a certain way, you really want to be asked to go,” he said.

If by “a certain way,” he’s referring to a way consistent with democratic principles, if he’s talking about a way involving collaborative, shared efforts, if he means a way that employs a well-thought-out strategy with a clear objective, he could actually have something. And if by wanting “to be asked to go,” he means he’s interested in respecting the authority of local leaders to help them achieve shared goals, it might even be worth talking about.

None of that is really part of Trump’s thinking, of course, if thinking is really part of the equation at all. Indeed, within two sentences of his expressed desire for an appeal from local officials, he shifted to disdain for “barging into a city” then to insulting “corrupt politicians” then to waffling that “we may or may not” go and finally to, “We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.”

With that kind of conscientious resolve, there’s really no “probably” about it. Trump should definitely not try to send National Guard forces to Chicago - or anywhere else for that matter.

It is useless to try to bring concerns about legality, constitutionality, democracy, separation of powers or other idealistic notions into this argument with a president and his assembled flatterers whose only true concern is political expediency, but those ideals are part of any reasonable conversation about this topic. If concern about law and order were the real issue, Trump’s proposal could become a serious idea only if two currently missing components were involved.

The first is acknowledgment that, whatever the level of crime in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit or other Democrat-led cities, the problem is as serious - indeed, often more serious - in numerous cities across the country, Republican as well as Democratically led. It would be fascinating, for example, to hear Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s reaction if the president proposed to send National Guard troops to his district encompassing Shreveport, Louisiana, which had a 2024 murder rate about 25% higher than Chicago’s.

A valid program to reduce urban crime would encompass the entire panorama of stakeholders, not just some scattershot selection of partisan targets chosen simply to keep the issue in the headlines.

The second necessary element would be a considered strategy involving coordination of federal, state and city resources working toward specific objectives based on an agreed-upon plan of action.

But this debate, to use the word loosely, is not about crime nor even about the law or the Constitution. It is simply about one side’s desire to use government muscle to score political points and another’s political need to respond with high-sounding rhetoric and the unreliable hope of court interference.

Unfortunately, the result is a partisan faceoff that can have no victor when it comes to a thoughtful program to promote safety. The best we can hope for is that President Trump will soon be distracted by some other political shiny object and give up his divisive, impractical notions of sending National Guard troops here or elsewhere to, somehow, fight crime.