On Monday, President Donald Trump announced he would put the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under federal control and deploy 800 members of the National Guard on the streets of the nation’s capital. Trump says these actions are necessary in an attempt to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”
Trump said he declared a public safety emergency and invoked section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which gives the president authority to command Washington’s Police Department in times of “emergency.” This act can only apply to Washington D.C., and no other state. The Home Rule Act states that the president should “determine that special conditions if an emergency nature exists which require the use of the Metropolitan Police force for Federal purposes.” It completely overrides Washington’s policing, sidelining Mayor Muriel Bowser, and putting Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge.
Although Trump stated that these are necessary steps to take in order to reduce crime in Washington, statistics show violent crime is down 26% from this point last year. Overall crime is down 7% and homicides are down 12%. And this is continuing a trend from 2024, where violent crime decreased 35% from 2023.
Mayor Bowser said on MSNBC on Sunday that Trump’s statements comparing the capital to a “war-torn country” are “hyperbolic and false,” refuting his allegations of the safety of Washington.
“This is what I know: we are not experiencing a crime spike. Carjacking had been our most concerning group of crime since 2023, and we’ve seen a 50% drop since 2023,” Bowser said. “This year we are also seeing that decline.”
“Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said. Bondi will lead MPD and new Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terry Cole will be interim federal commissioner of MPD, Trump said.
“This is liberation day in D.C. and we’re going to take our capital back,” the president said in a White House news conference. Trump described Washington as “one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the World” in a post on Truth Social Saturday, even as the statistics suggest otherwise.
President Trump says his action will go into further cities, mentioning Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Oakland, and Baltimore as cities with major problems of violent crime. “We’re starting very strongly with D.C., and we’re going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say,” he said.
Yet, statistics of violent crime in these cities have also shown a downward trend in recent years. In a news conference last week, OPD Chief Floyd Mitchell said that overall crime in Oakland has dropped by 28% in the first six months of 2025 compared to the same time period last year. Homicides in Los Angeles also fell by more than 20% and is on pace to end 2025 with the lowest total in nearly 60 years.
With this recently unfolding, the nation will have to wait and see if these actions stop the violent crime in Washington D.C., and if President Trump will take the same actions against other cities he deems are “very bad” on crime.
