President Trump announced Monday that the federal government would be taking over Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, flooding the city’s streets with National Guard troops and sending in the military “if it’s needed” — while looking to do the same in other major U.S. cities.
“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump said at the press conference.
Trump has used the alleged attempted carjacking of a Department of Government Efficiency employee to mischaracterize Washington, D.C., as a dangerous city overrun with violence, despite official statistics showing historic declines in violent crimes.
Data released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in January, revealed that total violent crime in D.C. was at a 30-year low in 2024, and had decreased by 35 percent from 2023. Homicides were down 32 percent from 2023; robberies were down almost 40 percent; and armed carjackings were down more than 50 percent.
But at Trump’s press conference he claimed, “Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore.”
Trump said he was invoking the Home Rule Act, which allows the president to take control of the D.C. police department for up to 48 hours and then seek an extension to control the department for up to 30 days. U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) told Axios that he was planning to introduce a resolution to end Trump’s control once the 48-hour window had passed.
At the press conference, Trump announced that they would be “removing homeless encampments” and “getting rid of the people from underpasses and public spaces from all over the city.” He had posted a similar threat on Truth Social over the weekend.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote. “We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong. It’s all going to happen very fast, just like the Border.”
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro joined Trump at Monday’s press conference, and called for harsher prosecutions of children, who she called “young punks.” (In 2000, Pirro’s then-husband was sentenced to federal prison for conspiracy and tax evasion.)
Trump posted a similar statement on Truth Social last week, stating that kids as young as 14 should be charged as adults. In response, the organization, Free D.C., which advocates for D.C. statehood, said, “We reject the criminalization of our youth.”
“Let’s be very clear: A 14-year-old is a child,” the group posted to its Facebook page. “And we will not stand by while anyone — no matter how powerful — tries to strip D.C. of our right to self-govern. Our children deserve care. Our city deserves the permanent power to govern ourselves.”
Pirro and Trump’s calls to punish kids as harshly as adults flies in the face of “overwhelming evidence showing that incarceration is an ineffective strategy for steering youth away from delinquent behavior and that high rates of youth incarceration do not improve public safety,” according to a 2023 report by The Sentencing Project.
“Scientific research shows key developmental differences between youth and adults that impact youth’s decision making, impulse control, and susceptibility to peer pressure,” the Juvenile Law Center says on its website. “While these differences do not excuse youth from responsibility for their actions, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that youth are less blameworthy than adults and more capable of change and rehabilitation.”
More than thirty years ago, Trump famously called for the execution of five children who were accused of a crime they were later proven innocent of, now known as the Central Park Five or the Exonerated Five.
During Trump’s remarks, he listed a number of other cities that were similarly “very bad” — Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland.
All of the cities named by Trump are run by Black mayors, and all, except for Baltimore, are sanctuary cities. (Earlier this year, the Trump administration mistakenly classified Baltimore as a sanctuary city. Baltimore’s mayor put out a statement correcting the administration, saying that though the city is not officially a sanctuary city because they do not have jurisdiction over the city’s jails, “We are a welcoming city, and we make no apologies for that.”)
“We’re not going to lose our cities over this, and this will go further,” Trump said on Monday. “We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.”
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