WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday he’s taking over Washington’s police department and activating 800 members of the National Guard in the hopes of reducing crime, even as city officials stressed crime is already falling in the nation’s capital.
The president, flanked by his attorney general, his defense secretary and the FBI director, said he was declaring a public safety emergency and his administration would be removing homeless encampments.
“We’re going to take our capital back,” Trump declared, adding he’d also be “getting rid of the slums.”
For Trump, the effort to take over public safety in Washington reflects an escalation of his aggressive approach to law enforcement. The District of Columbia’s status as a congressionally established federal district gives him a unique opportunity to push his tough-on-crime agenda, though he has not proposed solutions to the root causes of homelessness or crime.
Attorney General Pam Bondi will assume responsibility for Washington’s metro police department, Trump said, as he also railed against potholes and graffiti in the city and called them “embarrassing.” The president did not provide a timeline for the control of the police department, but he’s limited to 30 days under statute.
Local officials rejected the Republican president’s depiction of the district as crime-ridden and called his actions illegal.
“The administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,” District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb said. “There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia.”
Schwalb, a Democrat, said violent crime in the district reached historic 30-year lows last year and is down another 26 percent this year.
Combating crime
The president dismissed the idea that Washington needed to enlarge its 3,500-officer police force, even as he seeks to have more armed personnel going through the city with the goal of reducing crime.
“What you need is rules and regulations, and you need the right people to implement them,” he said.
Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in an executive order to declare a “crime emergency” so his administration could take over the city’s police force. He signed a directive for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to activate the National Guard.
While Trump has portrayed himself as a friend to law enforcement and enjoyed the political backing from many of their groups, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers.
About 500 federal law enforcement officers are being tasked with deploying throughout the nation’s capital as part of Trump’s effort to combat crime, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
More than 100 FBI agents and about 40 agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are among federal law enforcement personnel being assigned to patrols in Washington, the person briefed on the plans said. The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service are contributing officers.
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. The Justice Department didn’t immediately have a comment Monday morning.
The National Guard
Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, questioned the effectiveness of using the National Guard to enforce city laws and said the federal government could be far more helpful by funding more prosecutors or filling the 15 vacancies on the D.C. Superior Court, some of which have been open for years.
Bowser cannot activate the National Guard herself, but she can submit a request to the Pentagon.
“I just think that’s not the most efficient use of our Guard,” she said Sunday on MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” acknowledging it is “the president’s call about how to deploy the Guard.”
Bowser was making her first public comments since Trump started posting about crime in Washington last week. She noted that violent crime in Washington has decreased since a rise in 2023. Trump’s weekend social media posts depicted the district as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World.”
For Bowser, “Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false.”
Focusing on homelessness
Trump has emphasized the removal of Washington’s homeless population, though it was unclear where the thousands of people would go, and he did not give details at his news conference Monday.
“The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Sunday in a social media post. “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.”
Trump said last week that he was considering ways for the federal government to seize control of Washington, asserting that crime was “ridiculous” and the city was “unsafe,” after the recent assault of a high-profile member of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Crime statistics
Police statistics show homicides, robberies and burglaries are down this year when compared with this time in 2024. Overall, violent crime is down 26 percent compared with this time a year ago.
The president has criticized the district as full of “tents, squalor, filth, and Crime,” and he seems to have been set off by the attack on Edward Coristine, among the most visible figures of the bureaucracy-cutting effort known as DOGE. Police arrested two 15-year-olds in the attempted carjacking and said they were looking for others.
“This has to be the best run place in the country, not the worst run place in the country,” Trump said Wednesday.
He called Bowser “a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances.”
Trump has repeatedly suggested the rule of Washington could be returned to federal authorities. Doing so would require a repeal of the Home Rule Act of 1973 in Congress, a step Trump said lawyers are examining.
Bowser acknowledged the law allows the president to take more control over the city’s police, but only if certain conditions are met.
“None of those conditions exist in our city right now,” she said. “We are not experiencing a spike in crime. In fact, we’re watching our crime numbers go down.”
Story by Josh Boak and David Klepper, Associated Press. Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil, Alanna Durkin Richer, Darlene Superville and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.
