Attorney General Bill Barr traveled to Kansas City Wednesday to highlight a federal-local program to make more arrests in violent crime cases in major cities.

LISTEN TO PRESS CONFERENCE (33:53)

LeGend Taliferro’s mother, Charron Powell, urged the community to continue to share tips to solve violent crimes.

Six weeks ago, the Justice Department offered a partnership to the Kansas City Police Department and named it after four-old LeGend Taliferro who was killed by gunshots fired into an apartment while he slept.

Operation LeGend is now in eight other cities, including St. Louis.

Barr listed the numbers:

“Through Operation Legend, the federal government has dispatched to the nine cities more than 1,000 additional agents to work shoulder-to-shoulder with state and local law enforcement.  Here in Kansas City, for example, we have deployed more than 185 additional agents from the FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Marshals.

​We saw one result of those efforts last week, when Kansas City police arrested the suspected murderer of LeGend Taliferro.  The arrest was the product of hard work by the Kansas City Police Department, supported by critical assistance from the FBI and U.S. Marshals.  This arrest will not bring LeGend back, but it again makes his case an example of how we can come together to take violent criminals off the street and make our communities more safe.”

Chief Smith at Operation LeGend press conference in Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Police Chief Richard Smith said he welcomed the help.

“Our clearance rate is this morning, right around 60 something percent, right about the national average, maybe a little bit more. I think what we are seeing here with our assistance we are getting things done more timely. Things that would take us more time due to resources and manpower would not happen as quick,” Smith said.