This week, President Donald Trump said he was invoking emergency powers under the Home Rule Act to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (DC MPD), and supplemented that by flooding the city with 800 National Guard troops and a surge of federal agents. Flanked by his Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, FBI Director, US Attorney for the District of Columbia, and other officials, the president announced these actions under the pretense of making “DC safe again.” The President insisted that Washington has been “overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” and vowed to “rescue” the city. At the press conference, he specifically decried youth violence claiming that “caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day.” He also described homelessness as a major problem in the District that needs to be solved. This coming the day after posting on Truth Social earlier that “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital.”
Let’s be clear up front: even if there was a major crime wave in DC necessitating federal intervention, deploying overwhelming force (especially in a city where crime is actually plummeting) does nothing to curb youth violence or address homelessness. It’s actually a far departure from proven, humane and community-based solutions aimed at reducing these problems while protecting civil rights and liberties, and addressing the root causes of these issues. Indeed, given the deep tension with community-based policing and other programs that have been working, the president’s bulldozer approach is more likely to make matters worse.
Decades of Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) work show juvenile crime tracks with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), exposure to violence, unstable housing, school failure, and neighborhood poverty, not simply the number of patrol cars or tactical gear-wearing federal agents on a block. DOJ reports highlight family conflict, poor school attachment, delinquent peers, and community deprivation as the most changeable predictors of youth violence. These empirically based findings point toward family and school-based prevention rather than enforcement surges. What does work, based on extensive research, are summer youth employment programs (SYEPs), especially when paired with mentoring. In Chicago, a six-week summer jobs program reduced participants’ violent-crime arrests by roughly one-third over the following year; in New York City, SYEP participation lowered the chance of any arrest during the program summer by 17% and felony convictions by 38% (see research results here, here, and here).
Homelessness is a similar story: enforcement-heavy strategies and encampment “sweeps” don’t resolve homelessness and can make outcomes worse. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that dispersing encampments without housing increases health and safety harms for unsheltered people and disrupts connections to care. The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and HUD have repeatedly demonstrated that strong housing programs and permanent supportive housing dramatically improve housing stability and reduce costly crisis service use.
Consistently, the best evidence points to social and human services to achieve fewer kids in court and fewer people sleeping outside. If the real drivers of crime and homelessness lie in poverty, trauma, and lack of services, then flooding streets with federal agents is as effective as trying to cure a fever by blasting the AC.
The Wrong Tool for the Wrong Job
Beyond simply being the wrong strategic approach, the deployment of federal law enforcement agents and National Guard troops into DC is ill-advised, and can place these personnel at risk. Federal policing is designed to enforce national laws and protect federal interests, while community policing focuses on building relationships, trust, and problem-solving partnerships within specific neighborhoods. DC MPD is held 100% accountable to DC residents and elected officials, whereas federal law enforcement and the National Guard are not. Having gone through the police academy, I can tell you from first-hand experience that DC police are trained on how to wield their authority with compassion, discretion, and restraint; the three pillars of community policing. This is something that federal officers and National Guard troops are simply not taught. To put a finer point on it: they are not trained, for example, to exercise such discretion due to the very different functions they ordinarily perform.
Lastly, while the deployment of the DC Guard is largely symbolic, being relegated to patrolling relatively safe areas and at the location of federal property, they lack lethal and even less-than lethal tools. Were they in fact to be confronted with a violent situation, their ability to engage in what we call the “use of force continuum,” is hampered, placing them at a tactical disadvantage. The use-of-force continuum is a framework taught to law enforcement officers that guides them to apply only the level of force necessary for a situation, starting with verbal commands, then escalating through less-lethal measures (such as pepper spray, or tasers), and resorting to lethal force only when there’s an imminent threat of serious harm or death. Its purpose is to ensure proportional, lawful, and safe responses, with de-escalation as the priority. This framework exists not only to try to assure proportionality when using force, but also to protect the officer from harm.
Beyond techniques designed to escalate and de-escalate appropriately, local police guidelines, training, policies and procedures are reviewed by elected officials and oversight bodies. Civilian review boards, inspector generals, and public reporting requirements create a feedback loop that allows communities to have a say in how they are policed. Federal law enforcement agencies, in contrast, are largely insulated from such local oversight. Many federal units do not deploy body-worn cameras such as DC MPD, or there is no streamlined process for locals and the public to access the recordings. This means that the community often has no independent, transparent record of federal law enforcement encounters with the public. The National Guard has even fewer transparency measures; their missions are governed by military regulations, not municipal codes, and their actions are rarely subject to public complaint processes or civilians courts. All of these measures are critically important, particularly when President Trump publicly stated that officers must “knock the hell out of them, because it’s the only language they understand” when referring to juveniles engaged in unlawful activities.
Simply put: federal law enforcement agencies and the National Guard are not built for neighborhood-level crime prevention or for the delicate work of community trust-building. Their core missions are far different, more clearly defined, and leave little to no room for the discretion and relationship building required of state and local law enforcement. Federal assets are focused on enforcing federal laws, protecting federal property, securing borders, or responding to national emergencies. They are not embedded in neighborhoods, they don’t have long-standing relationships with residents, and they are rarely trained in the slow, often multi-generational work of community policing, and building trust with the local residents. Why is community trust so important? Because the best policed communities, are those that self-police. The ideal is when locals collaborate with law enforcement to identify, prevent, deter, and interdict crimes and criminals within their communities. This requires trust.
When is an Emergency not an Emergency?
The President painted a dire portrait of Washington as beset with crime as the justification to assume, for the first time in history, absolute emergency control of the DC police. But as the Bowser administration, independent researchers and observers, and even the federal government’s statistics suggest, crime in the District is at near-historic lows. We must first acknowledge that the White House has placed this discussion in the realm of fantasy, before we can begin to address what’s likely truly afoot.
The intelligence analyst inside of me says that there is a more strategic game afoot. In my best assessment, the takeover of the DC police provides the administration with the administrative and operational blueprint and legal precedent for rapidly responding to major political demonstrations or civil unrest in DC that are likely to materialize in the future. Trump lamented not being tough enough on protestors in DC during the summer of 2020 in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. Those protests, and the ensuing violence and looting were brought to an immediate halt when the President mobilized federal law enforcement and National Guard forces, without the consent of Mayor Bowser. He apparently viewed this action as a resounding success, but he stopped short of flexing his executive powers by taking over MPD.
An alternate analysis suggests that the President may try his best to never cede control of law enforcement in the District back to the local government. Under Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, the president can control DC’s police for 48 hours during an emergency, extend it to 30 days with congressional notification, and go longer only if Congress passes a joint resolution. At his latest briefing, Trump said he’ll push Congress for “long-term extensions,” insisting, “you can’t have 30 days.” A prolonged or indefinite federal takeover of DC’s law enforcement would represent a fundamental shift in the balance of local–federal power, setting a precedent that could be replicated elsewhere. While there are clear legal hurdles to attempt any extension without congressional action, the political, operational, and civil-liberties consequences would be immediate and far-reaching if the situation does become prolonged. And there is no legally imposed time limit to the president’s use of federal law enforcement and Guard forces in DC.
The irony is that while federal resources are tied up patrolling a city with historically low crime, each day they are being pulled from other national priorities where they’re actually needed, such as drug interdiction, human trafficking, counterterrorism, and domestic extremism. The net result could easily be not only a less safe DC, but a less safe homeland, with even more political polarization as those on the left and in the middle reject a dangerous new precedent for presidential power.
So why do it, and why now?
I submit that this current action is intended to work on multiple levels:
- The President shows that he can do it with little to no resistance. DC has no real cards to play, and little to no recourse that will stop what is occurring on the ground over the next 30 days or so.
- This current action is occurring in a no-fault environment. Meaning crime was already trending low, victory can be claimed at any time of his choosing, which is especially true as he and many who support him are willing to distort reality.
- The administration can work out administrative and operational kinks in coordination with federal and local assets now, when there is no true emergency. This will assure that they are more prepared when there is a need or desire to repeat this process in the future.
- The DC operation serves as a shot across the bow to other Democrat-run cities, several of which the president mentioned by name. While DC law enforcement is uniquely vulnerable to federal takeover, should the courts vindicate the administration’s use of the National Guard in Los Angeles over the summer to quell civil unrest, Trump will have a brighter green light to surge federal assets to other cities.
Lastly, and most concerning to me is that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi declared at the public announcement on Monday, “Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today.” And while such an absolute declaration is absurd on its face, it does raise the question: what does success look like? What level of crime will be low enough to call off this surge? The metrics of success cannot be zero crime, that’s simply impossible. If the administration is planning on making DC the safest city in the country, particularly with a strategy of only boots on the ground and a deprivation of the social and human services required to reduce crime, then the District should be prepared to endure a long occupation. And the ominous suggestion that this could spread to cities like Chicago or Oakland shows us this is not about public safety, it’s about politics and power.
With the same power Trump used to order reinforcements for this concocted emergency, he declined to mobilize help on January 6, 2021 for nearly three hours. I was on that infamous call with local and federal officials when the US Capitol was under siege by mobs of violent Trump supporters, and the request for the deployment of the DC Guard (which was mobilized and ready to roll) was flatly denied. Then it was a real emergency. Our democracy was in peril. Now the White House has offered up a staged crisis to justify a power grab with no clear rationale, or endpoint. It’s dangerous, and it’s cynical. Watching Monday’s press conference, I felt as if everyone who stepped up to the podium to talk about respecting the rule of law, and law enforcement officers that risk their lives to protect DC, was trolling us in real time.
The spectacle in D.C. is a warning: presidential authority is being stretched simply to grab power, and history tells us that’s how liberty erodes.
Thomas Jefferson warned: “Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Those slow operations are happening today in Washington, D.C.
Editor’s Note: For further analysis, listen to the Just Security podcast, “What Just Happened – Federalization of Law Enforcement in Washington DC,” featuring David Aaron, Carrie Cordero and Donell Harvin.
