FBI agents and a Metropolitan Police officer talk in a parking lot near Howard University, after US President Donald Trump's announcement to deploy the National Guard and federalize the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, US.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Washington: National Guard troops began to deploy in Washington on Tuesday evening as President Donald Trump’s plan to use the federal government to crack down on crime in the city started taking shape.
About a dozen members of the National Guard appeared in five military vehicles near the Washington Monument as the sun set, a stark juxtaposition to a peaceful evening scene of people jogging by with headphones and walking their dogs. An Army official said troops were continuing to gather at the DC Armory and were expected to deploy around national monuments and near a U.S. Park Police facility in the Anacostia neighborhood of southeast Washington.
Trump on Monday described the nation’s capital in apocalyptic terms as a crime-infested wasteland — a description that ignores the extent to which crime has been falling in the city over the past two years. But it remains unclear whether the eventual show of force will match the president’s rhetoric.
The initial deployment near the Washington Monument, at least, often resembled something less fearsome, with troops snapping photos of themselves with visitors. They left roughly two hours after they arrived.
“We just did a presence patrol to be amongst the people, to be seen,” Master Sgt Cory Boroff said as he stood near a Humvee. “Of the people, for the people in DC,” he added.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday that the administration’s campaign was just beginning. “Over the course of the next month, the Trump administration will relentlessly pursue and arrest every violent criminal in the District who breaks the law, undermines public safety and endangers law-abiding Americans,” she said.
Leavitt boasted that a federal task force, which includes some local officers, made 23 arrests Monday evening in connection with a range of crimes. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on social platform X on Tuesday evening that the FBI had participated in 10 arrests. In Washington, a city of roughly 700,000 people, the Metropolitan Police Department makes an average of 68 arrests a day, officials said.
Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, struck a forceful tone Tuesday night, calling Trump’s actions an “authoritarian push” and an “intrusion on our autonomy.” In a live town hall on social media, she denounced the frightening characterization of Washington that Trump has promoted, saying that seeing homeless encampments “triggers something in him that has him believing that our very beautiful city is dirty, which it is not.”