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Professor Begs Trump to Send Troops to Chicago To Stop 'Wannabe-Commandos'

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An immigrant from Jamaica who has gone on to become a DePaul University professor is publicly urging President Donald Trump to make good on one of the more aggressive domestic proposals of his fledgling administration.

Just days after his inauguration, Trump referenced high levels of violent crime in Chicago in a tweet threatening to “send in the Feds” to address the city’s “carnage.”

At the time, more than a few critics on both sides of the aisle denounced the proposal, as some likened the move to the imposition of martial law.

For one Chicago resident, however, the radical response makes sense.

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In a recent editorial published by The Hill, Jason D. Hill called on the president to act decisively to address the “horrific” homicide rate.

“Wannabe-commandos terrorize neighborhoods, challenging not only local authorities but the very authority you exercise as president of this great nation,” he wrote. “The potency of your own presidency is ridiculed when thugs and barbaric criminals take it upon themselves to establish lawless fiefdoms, usurping the law and order on which this republic was built and upon which its continued existence depends, as they kill innocent lives.”

Hill specifically urged Trump to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act, which limits the use of military troops outside of congressional authorization.

“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both,” the act states.

Is deploying troops to American cities an appropriate way to fight crime?

Hill called the legislation “dated,” using his personal story to make the case for a military deployment to the nation’s third-largest city.

He described working tirelessly as a poor immigrant more than three decades ago, struggling to put himself through college. That effort paid off when he graduated magnum cum laude and went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy on a scholarship.

“Not once did I believe that the state or America owed me anything except a chance to earn a living and pay my way as I journeyed through life,” he wrote.

The professor celebrated the “American virtues of individualism and personal excellence” while lamenting their absence among many of his students.

“But I am pained when my young student from the South Side tells me that he has to drop out of college and join a gang because that’s the only way he won’t get harassed or killed,” Hill wrote. “I am angry when I hear of the young woman who cannot cross the street to catch the bus to get to her university because she has to make herself sexually available to gang members before she can ‘cross turf.'”

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The net result of this systematic violent crime, he argues, is that those behind it have morphed into “operators of terror cells, nihilistic institutional organizations that invade the sphere of civilized life.”

He ended his editorial with another direct call to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act and “unleash” the U.S. military against its own citizenry.

“Do it not just to save black and Hispanic lives,” Hill wrote. “Do it because it is the moral thing to do. All lives matter. You are in a position to save them.”

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Chris Agee is an American journalist with more than 15 years of experience in a wide range of newsrooms.
Chris Agee is an American journalist with more than 15 years of experience in a variety of newsroom settings. After covering crime and other beats for newspapers and radio stations across the U.S., he served as managing editor at Western Journalism until 2017. He has also been a regular guest and guest host on several syndicated radio programs. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife and son.
Birthplace
Virginia
Nationality
American
Honors/Awards
Texas Press Association, Best News Writing - 2012
Education
Bachelor of Arts, Journalism - Averett University
Professional Memberships
Online News Association
Location
Arizona
Topics of Expertise
Politics, Entertainment




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