Trump Targets Cartels, Attacks on Police in Executive Orders

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a trio of anti-crime executive orders he said were "designed to restore safety in America" amid a tide of “rising crime,” even though experts and data have indicated that crime rates remain near historic lows. During a televised ceremony in the Oval Office that also saw the swearing-in of Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Trump said the orders were aimed at reducing crime, and that at least one concerned attacks on law enforcement while another focused on drug cartels. "I'm signing three executive actions today designed to restore safety in America," Trump said. RELATED CONTENT Sen. Jeff Sessions, seen here testifying at his confirmation hearing Jan. 10, 2017, was confirmed Wednesday as attorney general. Sessions Confirmed as Attorney General The president added that he is ordering the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security "to undertake all necessary and lawful actions to break the back of the criminal cartels that have spread across our nation and [are] destroying the blood of our youth." Referring to Sessions, he later said, "these dangerous times require a determined attorney general." The executive orders range in scope. One aims to improve cooperation between agencies in combating international criminal organizations and drug cartels, while another directs the attorney general to form a task force on reducing crime. The third calls for a review of federal laws that could lead to legislation creating new crime categories and penalties for attacks on law enforcement officers. In May, Louisiana became the first state to make targeting an officer a hate crime through legislation known as the "Blue Lives Matter" bill that easily passed the legislature and was signed into law by the state's Democratic governor. During the presidential campaign, Trump said he would issue an executive order mandating the death penalty for anyone who killed a police officer, though Thursday's directives do not include such language and that type of order likely would face substantial legal hurdles. Both Trump and Sessions have portrayed America as in the grips of a crime wave, despite FBI data and public policy experts indicating otherwise. Sessions, who was confirmed by the Senate as attorney general in a near-party line vote Wednesday evening, said at Thursday's ceremony that "the rise we're seeing in violent crime" is a "dangerous, permanent trend," echoing similar remarks the GOP senator from Alabama made during a confirmation hearing last month. Violent crime in the nation's 30 largest cities increased by about 3 percent in 2016, while the murder rate leaped 14 percent, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute at the New York University School of Law. Roughly half the increase in homicides, however, was attributable solely to Chicago, which saw a 50 percent surge in killings. A handful of cities, meanwhile, were mostly behind the increase in violent crime. Overall, the nation's crime rate held steady last year, increasing just 0.3 percent after a fall of 2.6 percent in 2015.