Why Trump is right to take over DC

Donald Trump‘s press conference announcing a federal takeover of Washington, DC‘s police force was packed to the gills with White House reporters – many of whom live in DC and the surrounding area, and are more than familiar with the degradation of law and order in the region. But just because they know it’s bad doesn’t mean they want to give Trump any credit for trying to clean up the city – in fact, they’re likely to attack the move from both sides.

The ramifications of Trump’s takeover, under Section 740‘s emergency rule, will have undetermined ripple effects in the capital city, but the initial reaction to it illustrates the difficult position in which it puts the president’s critics. Arguments from commentators on CNN and MSNBC immediately turned to official statistics, which show declines in violent crime in the past year and a half. The only problem? A DC police commander has already been suspended for cooking the books on those numbers, a practice that the DC police union claims is commonplace.

“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton said. “So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.”

Ever since the violent summer of George Floyd, Washington has struggled to achieve the same return to normalcy that has been the case in other major cities. A major driver is the lack of sufficient police staffing, with the Metro Police Department running almost a thousand officers short of needed levels. Carjackings and vehicle theft are three times the national average, and the homicide rate is six times that of New York City. The poor response times and lack of an ability to disburse gang activity is taken for granted by residents, with restaurant closures and other venues seeing less foot traffic because of the crime concerns.

“Over the last two years, DC has experienced a 52 percent drop in violent crime and is now at a 30-year low,” tweeted Councilman Charles Allen of the DC Council. “While any crime is one too many, every local leader in DC is committed to the work and progress of safer communities and preventing violence.” These words are particularly rich coming from Allen, who faced a recall campaign after being the council’s leading voice on reducing the number of MPD officers and pushing for slack sentencing guidelines for teenage perps.

The overall result of Trump’s move in media terms will be to make national figures finally pay attention to how bad things are in DC, if only to deny they justify his actions – but they’ll also be set to use any criminal activity that does happen going forward to argue that the administration methods are ineffective. But this is a sideshow: the real question is how DC’s citizens feel about what comes next, and whether it makes DC feel safe again. As a local who hasn’t been willing to risk taking my children into the city late in the day, I can hope that changes soon.