Biden Administration Puts New Emphasis on Fighting Violent Crime 

INDIANAPOLIS—The Biden administration is walking a tightrope on law enforcement, raising its support for local police fighting violent crime without abandoning its longtime goal of curbing misconduct in some departments.

In the past month alone, the Justice Department announced it would flood federal agents and racketeering prosecutors into Memphis, Tenn.; charged 20 people in South Carolina with trafficking guns and drugs; and seized a cache of machine guns, rifles and silencers in Rhode Island. The top federal prosecutor in Washington said he would try more teenage carjacking suspects as adults, blasting what he described as overly lenient criminal-justice laws that had “swung too far” in the nation’s capital.