Donald Trump said at a Monday morning press conference that he is federalizing the DC’s police department and sending 800 National Guard troops to the city. “I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse,” Trump said. He also announced a “public safety emergency” in DC. Trump is placing DC’s police department under the control of Attorney General Pam Bondi. He signed an executive order invoking a section of the DC Home Rule Act that allows the president to control the police department for up to 30 days, after which congressional approval is required.
Trump cited crime in the District for the move, saying that the city’s “murder rate is higher than Bogota, Colombia.” To support this claim, he used a chart comparing DC’s homicide rate to a number of other cities, including Mexico City, Bogota, and Lima, that has been circulating online. The chart cites the DC’s homicide rate in 2023, when there was a spike in crime, but homicide and crime rates have since fallen steadily. This year, violent crime is down 26 percent compared to 2024, according to DC police records.
Trump blamed both the Biden administration and local officials for DC’s crime rate, singling out the District’s policies related to cash bail and pretrial release. At the press conference, Trump was accompanied Bondi, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, FBI director Kash Patel, and US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. Burgum reminded DC residents that most of the parks in DC, including the circles, are federal property policed by the US Park Police. He announced that the Park Police will be continuing their enforcement of camping and graffiti bans on federal property. Since Trump’s March executive order “Making DC Safe and Beautiful Again,” the Park Police have removed over 70 encampments, Burgum said. Hegseth said that the DC National Guard will be operationalized by the Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, and “you will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.”
