The violent crime statistics in Democratic-run cities are staggering.

Over 300 people were shot last month in New York City alone, a 277 percent increase over the same period of a year ago.

Philadelphia recorded a 27 percent spike and Minneapolis crime soared a whopping 94 percent compared to last year.

As of last week, 414 people have been murdered in Chicago, about a 50 percent increase over last year. In one day alone, 23 people were shot, including at least 15 outside of a funeral home. During July Fourth weekend, 80 people were shot and 17 were killed and over Father’s Day weekend, 104 people were shot and 15 killed, including five young children.

The last weekend in May was Chicago’s deadliest day on record with 18 murders in 24 hours.

These grim statistics can’t begin to measure the amount of family suffering.

The random shootings of young adults and small children is heart-rending, like the 14-year-old who was playing basketball with friends in a Chicago park who died in a massacre that left eight people dead or wounded; or the 13-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet that came through the window of her home and hit her in the neck.

News of the death of 4-year-old LeGend Taliaferro, fatally shot while sleeping in a Kansas City apartment, shook the world. After his private funeral, Charron Powell, the boy’s mother, said the family wants justice and for LeGend’s legacy to live on.

Last week we learned that his legacy will live on through “Operation: LeGend,” an initiative announced by President Trump to crack down on the surging homicides and gun violence. It involves agents from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Trump said it’s a president’s sacred duty to provide for the safety of all Americans, and that no mother should ever have to cradle her dead child in her arms simply because politicians refused to do what is necessary.

LeGend’s mother urged the community and everyone else to get behind the operation, describing it as an opportunity to get justice for the hundreds of homicide victims in Kansas City.

The feedback from many Democratic leaders, meanwhile, has been negative. A number of liberal mayors called it a “federal occupation” and “a testing ground for martial law.” Regarding the administration’s decision to dispatch special agents to safeguard federal property in Portland, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tweeted: “These are not the actions of a democratic republic … Trump & his storm troopers must be stopped.”

Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted that under no circumstances will she allow “Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.”

Sending federal agents to help localities is not uncommon. Sen. Tom Cotton explained that The Insurrection Act, which empowers the president to “call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing” an insurrection, is important to keeping Americans safe during troubled times. Past presidents have used federal troops under the Insurrection Act to restore order, including President Eisenhower authorization in Little Rock in 1957 and President Bush in 1991 and in 1992 during the L.A. riots.

Cotton said federal troops should be the final line of defense. Local law enforcement should be allowed by mayors to protect their communities, to defend lives, to protect property, but if that doesn’t work, then governors have the power to call out the National Guard, as many did last month to help restore order in Minnesota or in Washington, where the National Guard is subject to the control of the federal government.

This administration and the families who have lost loved ones to violent crime don’t consider Operation: LeGend to be the action of federal storm troopers as liberals are charging.

The slaughter of innocent Americans in major cities should not be a political issue but, as the president said, it’s about justice.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com