Trump takes over D.C. police. Will other cities be next?

0:00I drove to work this morning through downtown D. Pretty morning, light traffic along Constitution Avenue, families and tourists strolling towards the monuments, snapping pictures of the White House. Two hours later, President Trump appeared in the White House briefing room and said this. Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth. Except that according to Justice Department statistics, violent crime in D.C. hit a three-decade low in 2024, that being the most recent year for which statistics are available. See, they fight back until you knock the hell out of them because it's the only language they understand.

0:40Trump said he's taking over Washington. He announced he is deploying the National Guard to the city. This after a weekend when scores of federal agents were deployed to the Capitol. The president also says purging the city's homeless people would be part of a wider effort to beautify the city. And we're getting rid of the slums, too. We have slums here. We're getting rid of them. I know it's not politically correct. You'll say, oh, so terrible. No, we're getting rid of the slums where they live. And Trump made another big promise that his administration would take control of the D.C. police. This will go further.

1:14We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick. Very quickly, as they say. Starting with D.C. because the president listed other big cities with what he says are high levels of crime. We have other cities also that are bad. Very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. Consider this. President Trump says he is using his executive authority to solve rampant crime in the nation's capital. What happens now? And what could this mean for other cities across the country?

1:51From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

2:03It's Consider This from NPR. First, to the streets of Washington, D.C., where NPR reporter Brian Mann has been following the city's increased law enforcement presence. My co-host Ari Shapiro spoke with him about what he's seeing on the ground and what may come next. At the press conference today, Trump was joined by other top officials, including the defense secretary and the attorney general. What did they say? Well, Trump made the case, Ari, and his cabinet officials backed him up on this, that Washington, D.C. is a lawless, deadly place. They said under federal control, law enforcement in Washington will be far more aggressive.

2:39They say they're comfortable using military troops if necessary to target gangs and young offenders. And Trump himself made it clear he's sending a signal with these actions to other major cities around the U.S. led by Democratic mayors. Other cities are hopefully watching this. They're all watching, just like everyone's watching here. They're all watching. And maybe they'll self-clean up. Now, what's remarkable here is that Trump's narrative is flatly contradicted by local and federal crime data that shows Washington, D.C. is much safer than it used to be. It's also contradicted by the lived experience.

3:15There is crime, of course, in Washington, but this is a peaceful city. It's filled with tourists, far from the dystopian portrait that Trump painted today. As we said, local officials are not happy. What did D.C.'s Mayor Muriel Bowser have to say about this? It was interesting. She made it clear she believes Trump does have the authority to take at least temporary control of the police. The law seems to suggest he can do this for 30 days unless Congress intervenes. Bowser described Trump's decision to wield this presidential authority as subjective. She said she's trying to figure out exactly how it's all going to work.

3:48And she also voiced a warning. I have reached out to Attorney General Bondi and hope to schedule a meeting soon. My message to residents is this. We know that access to our democracy is tenuous. Bowser said what she means there is that Washington doesn't have statehood. That means the city and its residents are vulnerable to Trump's power. August in D.C. is famously when lawmakers leave and school tourist groups arrive. What are you hearing from the people you talk to out around town today? Well, you know, Ari, this is a very democratic city. A lot of the people I've been talking to are shocked and dismayed by this.

4:25I spoke with Ashwin Narawain, a freelance IT worker, who says he sometimes works for progressive organizations. And here is his reaction to today's news. It's horrifying. I've never heard of anything like this happening here. It's a real shock from people. I've also been speaking with people in homeless camps who Trump has threatened to purge from the city, and they're really frightened. Trump hasn't said where people will be taken. He's only said they'll be sent far from Washington, and that means people being taken away from family connections and their support networks here in the city. Give us some context here, because Trump already sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles this summer to quell protests over ICE raids.

5:05There's still a legal fight over that deployment. How does this fit in? Well, this is a major symbolic escalation. This is Trump using his authority without support from local officials, putting soldiers on the streets of Washington, the nation's capital, the political ramifications of that at a time when Trump has already been openly pushing the boundaries of democratic norms. It's huge. There's also a practical street level here, Ari. This could be volatile. Experts I talked to were worried about how this kind of aggressive law enforcement will play out with American citizens, many of them vulnerable, mental health issues, addiction.

5:39Now, Guard troops just aren't trained for this kind of intervention. Trump says this is going to happen ruthlessly fast, but these social problems soldiers will be facing, these aren't military problems. That is NPR's Brian Mann. Thank you. Thank you.

5:58So what happens when you put a big city police force under federal control and combine it with federal troops? Those are questions NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman and NPR's Meg Anderson, who covers criminal justice, have been looking into. Meg, you start. President Trump, as we heard, is painting a very grim picture of Washington, D.C. He says it's in a dire public safety crisis. Is it? What do we know about crime in D.C.? Yeah, so the crime numbers just are not in line with how the president is talking about the district. The city did see an increase in crime after the pandemic. That happened in a lot of the country.

6:36Murders in particular rose sharply in D.C. until the end of 2023. But since then, crime has been falling. In fact, according to the Justice Department, violent crime in the city hit a 30-year low last year. City data shows homicides are down by more than 10 percent, robbery by almost 30 percent, carjackings are down nearly 40 percent. That's the crime I should mention that started all of this. A former DOJ staffer was injured in an attempted carjacking last week. All of this is in line with a nationwide trend. Crime is falling across the country, violent crime especially. Tom Bowman, what about these National Guard troops?

7:15The president says he wants 800 National Guard troops deployed to D.C. What will they do? Well, very little detail. Right. 800 D.C. Guard troops and there will be 100 to 200 soldiers supporting law enforcement at any given time. Their duties will include administrative tasks, logistics, you know, transportation, supplies, and finally, quote, physical presence. So what does that mean in practice? We don't know yet. One official said we're still working out the details on what that will look like. So a lot of questions. Does it mean going out on patrols with police, maybe making arrests or detaining people?

7:51Does it mean at static locations such as certain government buildings? But if you're at a static location, that's not necessarily where the crime is. It's in the neighborhoods, even though, again, violent crime has sharply dropped. But whatever that presence is, I'm told there could be the beginnings of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington, D.C. as early as next week. Meg, back to this question of Trump effectively taking over the police department here in Washington. Two questions. One, how? How is he able to do that? And two, what might this actually mean for people who live here?

8:27Yeah, so D.C. is a really unique place, right? It's a city without a state. Because of that, you know, there's there's it's just a little bit different. Right. Right. And so there's a law called Home Rule that gives city government a lot of local control over how things run. The police, for instance, normally report to the mayor and city council. But Home Rule does allow for a federal police takeover for up to 30 days. That is what's happening now. So for now, the police are going to answer to Attorney General Pam Bondi instead of the mayor and city council. I spoke to Vanessa Batters Thompson about this.

9:04She runs the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. And she said, you know, there's a lot is unknown, but this takeover could mean more arrests, especially of homeless people and young people. And it could change how the police do their jobs. The police currently do have policies. It's important to know that they write those policies. So if leadership changes, the policies and the practices of the department could also change. So, for instance, she said the criteria used by police for stopping and searching someone, that could change. And the longer the takeover goes on, the more likely it is that we would see policy changes.

9:45We just don't know yet. At the press conference this morning, though, Trump said he wants to do the same thing in other major cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York. But Batters Thompson said there really isn't any legal authority for Trump to federalize local police in other cities. It's because of D.C.'s lack of statehood that this is possible. But the National Guard, you know, that's a different story. It is a different story. And I want to focus on precedent here. Tom Bowman, there is precedent. The National Guard has been out on the streets of American cities many times over the years, including very recently in L.A.

10:20You know, you're right. You know, in the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and after the Rodney King beating or in Minneapolis after George Floyd's murder. But in this case, they had certain places to go. There was crime or whatever, a protest there. So there were certain places to go in this case, sending 100 to 200 guardsmen into the city to bring down crime. Unless you're going to actually go on patrol, it's hard to see what effect this will really have. This episode was produced by Vincent Acavino and Erica Ryan with audio engineering by Ted Meebane. It was edited by Andrea DeLeon, Andrew Sussman, Christopher Intagliata, Patrick Jaron Wadananen, Gigi Duban and Courtney Dorning.

11:06Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan.

11:11It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.