LIVE: US Attorney General Blanche Announces St. Louis as Model Cities Initiative Funding Recipient

has been awarded 68 million dollars through the Model Cities Initiative. This program is just one of many steps the Trump administration has taken to support our law enforcement officers and restore the rule of law in America's neighborhoods, towns, and cities. The 68 million dollars that we're announcing today represents the commitment That we are ready to announce and work with the city of St. Louis and law enforcement officials to allocate funds to help the city be safer every single month. These funds will be distributed to the city over the next three years. So for the next month or two, we'll finalize the plan. And then you should expect as citizens of this city to see law enforcement and the results as early as 2027 in the winter months. I want to recognize some people standing behind me and thank them for their work that got us here today, including Governor Mike Kehoe, Senator Eric Schmidt, your great Missouri Attorney General, Catherine Hanaway, Congressman Bell, City of St. Louis Police Chief Robert Tracy, and Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, and our ATF Director, Rob Ciccata. So just a few minutes to talk about the program. In June... The Department of Justice announced the Model Cities Initiative, and what it consisted of is approximately $300 million that we wanted to spend on a select number of cities who were willing to make a commitment to the Department of Justice to work with us to drive violent crime rates down in cities. Ultimately, 47 municipalities applied, 21... We're semi-finalists and 11 finalists were invited to meet with senior department officials to discuss their plan for their cities. Ultimately, four cities were selected, including St. Louis. We selected these four cities because of their compelling, whole-of-government vision for targeting violent crime and enhancing public safety across jurisdictional and ideological lines. And because of our belief in their ability to deliver results and follow through on the vision that every law enforcement officer has, hopefully, in every city, which is to bring violent crime rates down. Now, in St. Louis, we see a police department that's operating approximately 300 officers below its authorized strength. And St. Louis has the second highest murder rate among large U.S. cities at almost four times the national average. However. Over the past year, the city has made steady progress in reducing crime. We've seen robberies gone down 25%, juvenile shootings are down 22%, and misdemeanor thefts are down 28%. So we're on the right path, and we're looking forward to continuing the downward trends over the next several years. So we're here today to lend our support to the state and city as they work to reduce violent crime, which has burdened the residents. St. Louis for far too long. So, like we've talked about a lot, overall in this country, we have seen every single violent crime rate, every single violent crime stat go down over the past year and a half. However, we have a lot more work to do. And so the money we're talking about investing in St. Louis will go to support a real-time crime center, provide recruitment incentives. Replace a radio tower and improve the city's technology and crime-fighting capabilities. So you're going to see actual results from this investment in funds. Of course, as a result of this investment in funds, I also expect you'll see more officers walking the beat, more officers coming and getting recruited and coming to work for the St. Louis Police Department, which is everybody's goal. So, I want to just end by saying that this idea... The Model Cities Initiative. In some ways, it's basic. It's a surge of resources to a city who is making a commitment. Now, not just the police chief, not just the senator, not just the governor, but the entire city is making a commitment to work with the Department of Justice and invest in law enforcement. And that's what should work. And we would encourage every single city in this country, when they see what's happening in places like St. Louis, and they see the money that's coming in to make structural and real change to the police department, that they will too. Seek our help and seek money and partner with us because what every community wants is to be safer. So thank you very much for being here today. Congratulations to St. Louis and I'm going to turn it over now to Governor Kehoe. Thank you very much. Well, thank you, General. We're grateful to have you back in Missouri. Just about a month ago, Senator Schmidt and Attorney General Hannaway and I joined the General for our initiative that we had to make communities better as well on the west side of our state in Kansas City. Certainly, being a part of the Model Cities program is something that is near and dear to my heart. I really want to thank Congressman Bell and Congresswoman Wagner, who worked very closely with my friend Eric Schmidt. Every time I turn around, when we find something good coming to Missouri, we find Eric Schmidt's fingerprints on it. And I can't tell you, Eric, how grateful I am for your service and what you're doing to deliver the right thing back to Missouri. And in this case, it's to help the men and ladies in blue who are actually making a difference, along with the chief and his leadership team, to make sure that we can get our community safe. We've got members from the business community here who are wanting to invest in St. Louis. It's the front door. To most of the other parts of our state and as being born and raised here, I can tell you the significance of the courthouse behind us and the gateway to the West Arch that you see that says we are the ones. This is the place that started to go west and bringing back safer streets to our communities is paramount to economic investment from the rest of the business community and rebuilding who St. Louis is. General, I'm grateful that you mentioned the number of folks that we want to get back on the streets. It's something very much the General Hannaway, Eric Schmidt and others, along with the chief, the police board who are here, are very committed to is getting more feet on the streets so that we can help our law enforcement efforts and get our communities back to where they need to be, including right here in the city of St. Louis. We couldn't be more proud as a state to be able to accept this grant and put it to work immediately. Worked with the rest of the law enforcement partners. We've had a couple of good examples of that. Not only our Blue Shield Cities program, which now has 350 cities across the state involved in law enforcement, but also our Operation Relentless Pursuit, ORP, which the chief and others with U.S. Marshals, ATF agents, have worked together to serve now 2,200 warrants. And the 18-month ORP has been going. So that's what we want to continue to do, deliver public safety and build our economy on top of that foundation of a safer community. And I can't thank everybody enough for being involved in that that's here today and standing behind me. I mentioned Eric Schmidt already, but it's my honor to be able to introduce your U.S. Senator. Eric and I served together in the Missouri Senate together. I don't think either one of us ever thought we would end up in these positions. Thank He's worked very hard to carry Missouri in his heart to Washington, D.C., but as a St. Louis native, he understands how important you this region is and what it means to the rest of the state, and I couldn't be more proud to call him a friend, and I couldn't be more very proud to have him as our U.S. Senator in Washington, D.C. He's awesome for our team to work with. Please help me welcome U.S. Senator Eric Schmidt. much. Thank you. I think for far too long, the good people of St. Louis have had to accept the scourge of violent crime, ripping apart our neighborhoods, our communities, our reputation, but that ends. And this is a big part of all of that. I want to talk a little bit, just briefly, about how this started. When the Attorney General was going through his confirmation process, we had a long conversation about this program specifically. And I told them what a great place St. Louis was and is and can be, but central to this great American comeback is taking on violent crime. And so we've had some successes. We've had the largest infusion of permanent FBI agents in St. Louis. Anywhere in the country, they're in St. Louis. That is bearing fruit. We had, over the last couple of months, through Operation Show Me Justice and Viper, over 500 of the most violent criminals on our streets have been taken off the streets so that the people of this city can live safer and flourish. That is what this whole thing is about. This nearly $70 million will go a long way in providing state-of-the-art ways to protect our communities. And also, for the men and women who are in blue here today, this is about supporting you. This is about your livelihoods and the dangerous work that you do every single day when you run into danger or you're dealing with something at 2 in the morning while everyone else is asleep. This is a statement that we support you in the work that you do and that reinforcements are coming. This is not a one-and-done thing. I've said this a couple of times now. We've had these press conferences. We're going to be announcing real results because I do think it's important for the people of this town not just to see the bad news that's on their television sets at 5, 6, and 10, but the turnaround, the reduction in violent crime, and then for the rest of the world to not associate St. Louis with violent crime, but rather people coming together. who believe that this community is a great place and deserves the protection of our police and deserves to live in safe communities. So I want to thank the Attorney General and I want to thank the department for awarding St. Louis. This is a huge deal. We're one of four cities in the whole country that's going to receive this sort of support. That is a huge deal, and I thank the leadership of Attorney General Blanche and the whole Department of Justice team and President Trump also. So with that, I'll turn it over to Attorney General Catherine Hannaway. St. Louis wins. St. Louis wins. St. Louis wins. Yeah, we haven't heard that enough lately and we're going to keep hearing it. And we're going to keep hearing it because of such strong support. The Attorney General of the United States is here in St. Louis. The Director of the ATF is here in St. Louis. Our Senator Eric Schmidt are here in St. Louis. These are the decision On this kind of a grant, it's amazing that we want it, but to get it. It's Missourians who had to lead on it, and the leadership very much came from our governor, who from day one said, I'm going to be the most pro-law enforcement governor in the history of the state, fought hard for a civilian board to lead the department. I'm so grateful to the Mr. Chairman and the board members who are here, and to all the men and women in blue and the command staff who has been fighting to keep us safe. Even short-handed, even underpaid, this is going to make a tremendous difference in the safety of our city. We are so lucky that we work as a team. I forgot to mention Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodard, who has been to St. Louis twice in the last month. That kind of leadership doesn't just happen. It's a choice. It's a strong choice. And of course, I want to thank our U.S. attorneys from the Southern District of Illinois and from St. Louis. We've never had this kind of cooperation between federal officials and state officials. The other element, and it really is a three-legged stool. We have the business community with us. Bob and Steve O'Loughlin are sitting here in the front row. We have an entertainment district in downtown St. Louis that has extra law enforcement protection because of their leadership, and they are bringing more and more conventions and visitors here, and it's energy in downtown that's going to turn it around. This is kind of personal to me, I will just say. Our office, I can almost see from here if that black building wasn't there. I'm in downtown St. Louis a lot. I see what happens out in front of that building. I say a prayer for the men and women who choose to wear the blue, who choose to run towards danger when everyone else runs away, who choose to ask their families to make that sacrifice of not knowing what will happen at the end of a watch. And so I want to say thank you to them. We have your back. Now we have your back with a lot more resources. And it's my pleasure to introduce your great leader, Chief Robert Tracy. Today is a significant investment in St. Louis and in our region, in our offices, our neighborhoods, and the people who call our city our home. I want to thank Attorney General Blanche and the Department of Justice for their confidence in our department and our community. Thank you to our governor. Missouri Attorney General, our U.S. Attorney, for supporting this effort, and our congressional partners for advocating for St. Louis, especially U.S. Senator Eric Schmidt for believing in everything the men and women of St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department are doing. Without his fierce support and work in Washington, D.C., this investment in SLMPD would not be possible today. Thank you again. I also want to recognize President Chris Saraceno and the Board of Police Commissioners. Our federal law enforcement partners and the business and community leaders who help bring this moment to fruition, including the Urban League and the Clergy Coalition who are with us here today. You understand that public safety requires all of us. The relationships we build, the opportunities we create, and the support we provide people in crisis and contribute to safer neighborhoods. Through Model Cities initiatives, we have an opportunity to strengthen that work. Our priorities are clear. Recruit and support our officers, improve their training, give the investigators better tools, invest in technology that helps us respond more effectively. Just as importantly, we want to strengthen the support for victims and connect people in crisis with services that can help. For an officer responding to a dangerous call, that can mean better protective equipment. For a detective, it can mean tools needed to identify a suspect and bring answers to a grieving family. For someone struggling with homelessness, mental illness, or addiction, it can mean a connection and help that they need and deserve. Those are outcomes that matter. Our officers and professional staff have worked hard alongside our partners and residents to reduce violence. We are proud of that work, but we also know that progress must reach every neighborhood and that every family affected by violence deserves our continued sense of urgency. To our residents. You deserve to feel safe walking down your block. You deserve to feel safe opening up your business or watching your children play outside. That is what this investment must deliver. We will approach this opportunity with clear goals, responsible stewardship, and a commitment to sharing our progress with the public. To everyone standing with St. Louis today, thank you. Together we can turn this investment into a lasting safety Stronger trust and a greater opportunity for the people that we serve. And with that, I have the honor to introduce a very good friend of mine, Rob Ciccata, who's the director of the ATF. Good morning, everyone. I've had the great pleasure of working with Bob Tracy for the better part of 30 years. We started in NYPD together. This guy knows how to reduce violent crime. We fought through the highest incidence of violent crime in New York City back in the early 90s. He knows the recipe for success. He's got the greatest law enforcement team that you could assemble here, the leadership team standing in front of me. And we both know what we need to do with the partnership that we have with the community. Our state and local law enforcement partners, the federal law enforcement prosecutors that are sitting here with us, our federal law enforcement partners as well. We had a great initiative, Operation Show Me Justice, which was used to add on to the already focused efforts that the police department was making to make significant reduction in violent crime. I think there couldn't be a better city to have this additional funding and this investment to continue these efforts to make sure that violent crime is continuing in a downward trend and make sure that the city becomes a safe place. For its community, the residents, and its business community in the future. This will lay the foundation for the development of a real-time crime center, which will link up with ATF's Crime Gun Intelligence Center, where we'll use NIBIN, e-trace, and DNA to help identify the people responsible for committing the most violent crimes in this city and remove those violent offenders from the streets as soon as possible. So thank you again for your investment in our agency and your partnership. We will always be there standing shoulder to shoulder with you on the street. It's my pleasure to introduce Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. Well, good morning, everyone. I want to summarize what you've just heard from my colleagues and partners behind me with a simple, profound observation. Public safety is not controversial. When President Trump returned to office, he had a simple mandate for us. Make America safe again. And we've done that across the country, including in St. Louis, where homicide rates have dropped, where nonviolent crime has dropped, where every category that we measure at the Department of Justice, we have seen a decrease. And that's because of a simple phenomenon. When we partner with our federal law enforcement agencies, ATF, FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshal Service, you all don't care what badge they're carrying. You care that we're all blue. And President Trump directed Attorney General Blanch and myself to back the blue. And that is what this initiative is about. We are very, very proud and honored to present the governor and his colleagues with this check. And we look forward to returning next year and the year after. Because with great power does come responsibility. There are only four cities that are getting this award. And so we need your help. We need this to be a success. So that next year when we're back to evaluate your efforts. We are doing this in eight cities and 12 cities and all across this country. But I'm confident that we can do it together. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys very much. And thanks to all the members of the law enforcement that are here today and also our U.S. attorney, Tom Albus, for being here and our federal partners that are here as well. Thank you guys. And congratulations again to St. Louis. And as Stanley just said, we look forward to watching. In this case, we'd love to see numbers go way, way down. So every single crime statistic, we look forward to seeing those numbers go down. So thank you very much. I'll take some questions if anybody has any questions. Well, it depends on when you say who gets to allocate. It depends on... What particular item or thing is the money is being spent on? So for example, there expects to be an investment in a crime center. So depending on where that money is going, DOJ will work with your leadership and send the money to where it needs to go. So it depends. Are there strings attached to this money? Does St. Louis need to do certain things in order to continue to receive the money? When you say... Do certain things. What do you mean? I mean, yes, the answer is yes. What we expect is what every single citizen in this city expects, what everybody on this platform just talked about. We expect the partnership. This is an investment, right? So this is an investment. So your leadership, this has nothing to do with whether somebody is a Republican or a Democrat. What this has to do with is your leadership committing. To investing in law enforcement and what that means depends on the city. So for St. Louis, when St. Louis came to us, they said, here's what we need money for. We need to hire more law enforcement officers, but we need to invest in technology. We need to invest in a crime center. We need to invest in making sure the information systems that we have keep up with modern times. And so that's what we want to spend our money on, DOJ, and we're partnering with you to do that. And so... Yes, there are, you know, if you want to use the word strings attached, but we don't view this as strings attached. We view this as a pure partnership. You have a, go ahead. I think most of us are going to be here this morning. Well, it's a grant. It's not a loan. So this is money. I mean, no, I can't imagine there are circumstances. But, you know, look, you're asking me if there's any hypothetical. But no, there's nothing hidden here. There's nothing hidden here. The Model Cities Initiative was an idea that we had at the Department of Justice and said, OK. What can we do? The generosity of Congress, of the Senators, and the House that gives money to the Department of Justice to invest in communities, okay? And so we said we want to invest in communities that also want to bring crime down. And so, like we said, some cities didn't want to do it. Some cities didn't want to partner with us. There should be some kind of community that... I'm checking down all these complaints that all the new kids should be. It's not a Republican or Democratic type of thing here. I think everybody, I've been to left funeral capacity. I think that's the real change that needs to happen with people. I've been a hospital for eight years. There's so many vacant buildings downtown. Where's the thrill? When I go to other cities, I'm a world traveler. I've been to many of those. When I go to other cities, I have something. There's nothing to see. You guys block down the riverfront, do the climb, but how can the people of St. Lawrence enjoy that? So you say that there is something that you can do about it. I don't know if you have a question, but just to restate what we've been saying for the past 20 minutes, okay? There are, sorry, I'll let you talk, okay? Let me talk, all right? So there are still parts of this city. And the city overall has a violent crime problem, okay? A lot of cities in this country do, you're right. But St. Louis does. And so while we have seen great strides by these, while we have seen great strides over the past year to see some of these numbers come down, they're not where they should be. The murder rate is still way too high here. That's what we're focused on. So other questions? Go ahead. So when you're looking at crime statistics, We don't live in a bubble. Of course the city proper, when you look at, you know, the logs coming in from the police department, folks are coming in from the county, from Illinois, from other places. How do you see regional cooperation working, you know, through this program so it's not just, you know, the city tackling this big regional issue? Yeah, so one of the investments that we're making has to do with information sharing. So making sure the technology that the city has, that the police department has, is up so that you can communicate effectively with not only other local law enforcement in Missouri, but other state law enforcement in other states and local law enforcement as well. One of the biggest challenges law enforcement has is effective communication with each other, whether it's local to local or federal to state, federal to local. But it's expensive. It costs a lot of money to keep your systems. And so that's one of the things that this money is going to be used for. Other questions? Mr. Attorney General, the congressman that represents this district is Wesley Bell. He sits on the Oversight Committee. We know Democrats are coming into Congress, and they have an oversight job to do. Given some of your remarks this weekend, can you pledge today not to interfere or obstruct any of Congress's constitutional... What remarks are you talking about that suggest that I wouldn't, that we wouldn't work with oversight? What are you talking about? I couldn't hear you. I said, you said I'd make comments this weekend. What comments did I make that suggested that we would not cooperate with oversight? Well, oversight's not a new committee. The oversight committee exists right now in this Congress, and Congress has oversight authority. It always has, it always will. The Department of Justice, the federal government, works with Congress to address questions they have, whether it's through subpoenas or letters, and so we're not going to stop working with Congress or allowing them to conduct their oversight responsibilities, and nothing I've said... This weekend or in the past should suggest otherwise. Chief Tracy, what happens after three years? What do you mean what happens after three years? So this is a three-year program, right? So it's an investment. My question is for the chief. You get this money. After three years, the investment goes away. What does the city do after that? Well, the investment doesn't go away. The money is spent on technology and programs and things that will remain forever. This isn't new, by the way. This is the way grant programs work. The way that grant programs work is to infuse cash into an organization, in this case law enforcement, so that you can make changes to structural changes, whether it's information technology or what have you, that lasts way beyond the three years. So it's not as if the money just is being pulled. No, it's an investment in the city, so it doesn't go away. Go ahead. There's a lot of talking. Guys, hold on a second. So, St. Louis is a community that went through Ferguson and a lot of turmoil, and there was a lot of people coming out saying they didn't want to see their police department turn into a more militarized operation. Does this grant that's being given to the police department, does that move this department closer to that? And again, just clarifying, does St. Louis and St. Louis Police Department work with DOJ, or is the DOJ overseeing this situation? We're working together. This doesn't move the police department towards more militarized or anything like that. The goal that we have, the goal that the Department of Justice has, is the same goal the chief has. It's the same goal that these law enforcement officers have, the same goal that the federal agents have. We want to bring violent crime down so that when we come back in a year, when we come back in a year, the number of murders... That took place this year. There should be fewer next year. That's what every citizen should want. That's what every law enforcement officer should want. And that's what our goal is as well. All right, one more question. How could this money be used to fix some of the physical building infrastructure problems that the police department has? I don't know off the top of my head whether this money will go to that. But here's the point, and we talked about this over the past week. What this money will be used for, it allows, there's more money now, right? So now to the extent the police department had to make tough decisions when they have a budget and they have to decide how to spend their money, there's now an influx of $68 million over three years into the police department. So yes, if there's structural changes that they need to make, they now have more money. To not only hopefully hire more officers, but also make other changes like that. Okay, I'll take one more question. Can you talk about the Kelly Hopkins Fox News? This is a big deal for our area, supporting our officers and supporting the community. The message that you want to send to our residents that you know help us on the way to help reduce crime. So, I mean, when we say help, when we say help is on the way and what we're, we want to partner, we want to partner with law enforcement. So, so you're a U.S. attorney. When he takes a case in, whether it's a fraud case, a murder case, a drug case, or whether it's a case that he doesn't take because the state should take it, because the AG should take it, that's us working together. And that is exactly what we try to do every day. So, so you're, Tom, I was the U.S. attorney here. His, his directive from me, And his directive from anybody that works with me is have your prosecutors put bad guys in jail. So when it comes to federal crime, that's murders, that's fraud, that's drug dealers. And that's what we expect, that's what you should expect, and that's what the people of St. Louis should expect their prosecutors to do. All right, so thank you guys very much. I appreciate it. And congratulations again to St. Louis. Thank you.