Cliff from Arlington, Virginia, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
President Trump has invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control with Attorney General Pam Bondi overseeing operations. The move also includes deploying 800 National Guard troops to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C., with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stating they will be “flowing into the streets” in the coming week.
In addition, about 500 federal law enforcement officers, including 120 FBI agents assigned to overnight shifts, are being positioned throughout the capital.
In his executive memorandum, Trump cited recent high-profile incidents, including the May murders of two embassy staffers, the June fatal shooting of a congressional intern near the White House, and the recent beating of an administration staffer by a mob. He declared that the local government has lost control of public safety, noting that Washington’s violent crime rate is higher than some of the most dangerous places in the world.
Under federal law, the president may federalize the police in Washington, D.C., for 48 hours before notifying Congress and for up to 30 days without congressional approval. Referring to the move as “liberation day” in D.C., Trump formally announced the takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Democrats and liberal media outlets have characterized President Trump’s activation of the D.C. National Guard and federal takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department as “tyranny,” “Nazi,” and other inflammatory terms. Local officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, have called the move “unsettling and unprecedented” and “a historic assault on D.C. home rule.”
Critics cite a reported 26 percent drop in violent crime in 2024, the lowest in over 30 years, to argue Trump exaggerated D.C.’s crime problem. However, the figures were heavily manipulated, masking crime levels that remain extremely high. Trump points to policing reforms under the Biden administration that weakened law enforcement’s ability to prevent and respond to crime. While opponents deny the reforms reduced police effectiveness and maintain crime has fallen, primary data and investigations show otherwise.
The Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Act, enacted in 2020 and made permanent in 2022, introduced sweeping changes to D.C. law enforcement. The law banned chokeholds, restricted chemical agents and less-lethal weapons at protests, limited high-speed pursuits, and imposed new consent search rules. It also restricted acquiring military-style equipment and mandated training on bias, de-escalation, and constitutional policing.
Evidence from multiple sources shows that violent crime in Washington, D.C., has not decreased as claimed and that serious offenses have been downgraded to lesser charges to artificially lower statistics. In May 2024, a D.C. police commander was placed on administrative leave after the police union accused him of deliberately falsifying data by reclassifying crimes such as
Assault with a Dangerous Weapon into the lesser “felony assault” category, avoiding FBI Part I reporting. The union stated that management directed officers to make these changes because felony assault does not appear in daily crime statistics or federal reporting.
Crime data analyst Jeff Asher found major discrepancies between D.C.’s public crime figures and the data submitted to the FBI. In 2024, the city’s public site listed only 1,026 assaults with a dangerous weapon, yet 3,004 aggravated assaults were reported to the FBI, nearly triple the number.
While the city claimed a 27 percent drop in assaults with a dangerous weapon, FBI data showed a 7 percent increase in aggravated assaults for the same period. The Metropolitan Police Department was able to mask these crimes by noting that public numbers use D.C. Code offense definitions and do not match the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Part I totals.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office reports that prosecution rates have remained chronically low, with the day-of-arrest charging rate dropping sharply between 2020 and 2022 due to pandemic disruptions and forensic lab issues, recovering only to 57 percent in 2024.
Federal prosecutors acknowledge they often give victims of misdemeanor offenses significant influence over whether charges are pursued, with many choosing not to proceed. They also frequently classify crimes as misdemeanors that would be treated as more serious offenses in other jurisdictions.
The Manhattan Institute’s analysis shows broader systemic declines in law enforcement capacity. From 2019 to 2023, the Metropolitan Police Department lost nearly 500 officers, a 12 percent reduction, bringing staffing to a half-century low. District-level staffing dropped from 2,300–2,400 officers in FY 2018–2020 to 1,901 by May 2024, a 17 percent decrease. Arrest activity also fell, from roughly 0.7 arrests per officer per month before March 2020 to about 0.4 per month by late 2022.
Prosecution rates collapsed in parallel, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuting fewer than half of felony cases and only about a quarter of misdemeanors by 2022, down from two-thirds of felonies and half of misdemeanors in 2019. Public backlash over prosecutors declining to charge nearly 70 percent of arrested offenders in 2022 led to some improvement, but by October 2023 the rate had risen only to 56 percent, still historically low, though higher than most of the past decade.
Alternative crime indicators point to a more serious public safety problem than official statistics suggest. Motor vehicle thefts rose from 2,186 in 2019 to 6,799 in 2023, giving Washington, D.C., the highest per capita car theft rate in the nation, 842.4 per 100,000 residents, nearly double that of the second-place state.
Data manipulation concerns were reinforced in May 2024, when a D.C. police commander was suspended after the police union accused him of reclassifying assaults with a dangerous weapon, including those involving bats or firearms, as felony assault to avoid FBI reporting. The union described this as a command-level directive to keep crime numbers low. Combined with staffing losses, reduced arrests, and low prosecution rates, these allegations indicate that recent reforms have fundamentally weakened D.C.’s criminal justice system.
Once again, Trump was right, crime is rampant in D.C., and he has an immediate solution. With 800 National Guardsmen on the streets, residents can expect to walk to their cars at night without fearing muggings or carjackings.
The post President Trump Activates DC National Guard to Fight Crime: Democrats Angry, Criminals Scared, and Citizens Safer appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.