D.C. Faces Federal Takeover: What It Means for Black Communities – Capital B News

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President Donald Trump is deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and said he will take over the city’s police department, as he signed an executive order Monday to have federal agencies help in what he describes as a crackdown on crime.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs, and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump said at a Monday morning press conference.
But, recent data shows crime in the nation’s capital has been on the decline since 2024. 
“We are not experiencing a crime spike,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser during an interview on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Aug. 10. 
On Monday, Bowser held a press conference where she said the president’s concerns about crime stem from old data. She said during Trump’s first administration, crime spiked post-COVID, but local authorities “worked quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools.”
Bowser added that local authorities were “able to reverse that 2023 crime spike.”
Trump’s move to federalize Washington police followed the carjacking of a former Department of Government Ethics employee earlier this month. 
“Be Prepared! There will be no ‘Mr. Nice Guy.’ We want our Capital BACK,” Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social after the carjacking.
During the Monday press conference, the president stood alongside members of his Cabinet along with Washington U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose office will prosecute those arrested during the temporary overhaul.  
Pirro said during the press conference that she supports Trump’s call to lower the age to prosecute adolescents to 14. The former DOGE employee was allegedly attacked by teenagers. 
This is not the first time Trump has deployed the National Guard in Washington. In response to nationwide protests after the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, Trump and then-Attorney General Bill Barr utilized a legal loophole to deploy the U.S. National Guard in the city. Trump also dispatched federal agents to Portland, Oregon, resulting in hundreds of arrests.
Currently, crime is at a 30-year low in Washington.
But on Monday, Trump said he has the option to extend the federalization of Washington police for 30 days under the Home Rule Act — a policy that allows the district to govern itself with specific limitations enforced by Congress.
“Declaring this emergency, sending the military into the neighborhoods of D.C., despite recent drops in violent crime, is a ruthless, targeted attack on the people of this great city,” said Common Cause President & CEO Virginia Kase Solomón in a statement on Monday.
Solomón, who runs a nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen democracy, said Trump’s move will “cause terror in our communities and hurt everyone — families, small businesses, and the local economy.”
“All Americans should be concerned as Donald Trump lays his sights on other communities throughout the country,” she added.
Being Black in America is defined by haunting statistics, especially when encountering the criminal legal system. For one, Black people are arrested at 2.5 times the rate of their white counterparts, despite similar criminal activity rates, according to a report by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.
Following the deployment of federal agents to Washington, attendance at public demonstrations may decline, advocates said during a Black Lives Matter Grassroots media call in June. Black people — regardless of their immigration status — must remain vigilant, Guerline M. Jozef, founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, said during the call. 
“They’ll not be allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to see,” Trump said at the press conference on Monday.
But on the first day of Trump’s second term, he issued a sweeping clemency order that included pardons for nearly all the convicted Jan. 6 rioters. 
Following Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They threatened elected officials, including then-Vice President Mike Pence, and assaulted law enforcement officers as Congress certified Biden’s election. Trump declined for hours to call them off, according to unsealed court documents from the Justice Department. 
Many people were arrested, convicted, and sentenced to federal prison after Jan. 6. 
In May 2020, protests across the nation after the police murder of George Floyd helped shine a spotlight on other killings involving law enforcement, and underscored the use of excessive force by officers during encounters with Black and brown Americans. Nearly 300 Black people were killed by police in 2020 alone, according to one analysis.
During the protest following Floyd’s death, Trump deployed federal troops in 15 states and Washington. 
At the time, Trump posted on social media, threatening that the federal government “will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests.”
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Christina Carrega is the criminal justice reporter at Capital B. Twitter @ChrisCarrega More by Christina Carrega
Capital B is a Black-led, nonprofit local and national news organization reporting for Black communities across the country.

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