MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
I drove to work this morning through downtown D.C. Pretty morning, light traffic along Constitution Avenue, families and tourists strolling towards the monuments, snapping pictures of the White House, which is where two hours later, President Trump stepped into the briefing room and said this.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.
KELLY: President Trump said he is declaring a public safety emergency for the district. He's placing D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department under federal control and deploying the National Guard. Here to talk with us more about this are NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey, there.
TOM BOWMAN, BYLINE: Hey, Mary Louise.
KELLY: And NPR criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson. Welcome.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Hi.
KELLY: Hi. Meg, you start. President Trump, as we heard, is painting a very grim picture of Washington, D.C. He says it's in a dire public safety crisis. Is it? What do we know about crime in D.C.?
ANDERSON: Yeah, so the crime numbers just are not in line with how the president is talking about the district. The city did see an increase in crime after the pandemic. That happened in a lot of the country. Murders in particular rose sharply in D.C. until the end of 2023. But since then, crime has been falling. In fact, according to the Justice Department, violent crime in the city hit a 30-year low last year. City data shows homicides are down by more than 10%, robbery by almost 30%, carjackings are down nearly 40%. That's the crime - I should mention - that started all of this. A former DOGE staffer was injured in an attempted carjacking last week. All of this is in line with a nationwide trend. Crime is falling across the country, violent crime especially.
KELLY: Tom Bowman, what about these National Guard troops? The president says he wants 800 National Guard troops deployed to D.C. What will they do?
BOWMAN: Well, very little detail. Right, 800 D.C. Guard troops, and there will be 100 to 200 soldiers supporting law enforcement at any given time. Their duties will include administrative tasks, logistics, you know, transportation, supplies and finally, quote, "physical presence." So what does that mean in practice? We don't know yet. One official said, we're still working out the details on what that will look like - so a lot of questions. Does it mean going out on patrols with police, maybe making arrests or detaining people? Does it mean at static locations such as certain government buildings? But if you're at a static location, that's not necessarily where the crime is. It's in the neighborhoods, even though, again, violent crime has sharply dropped. But whatever that presence is, I'm told there could be the beginnings of National Guard troops on the streets of Washington, D.C. as early as next week.
KELLY: Meg, back to this question of Trump effectively taking over the police department here in Washington. Two questions. One - how? How is he able to do that? And two, what might this actually mean for people who live here?
ANDERSON: Yeah, so D.C. is a really unique place, right? It's a city without a state. Because of that, you know, there's - it's just a little bit different, right? And so there's a law called home rule that gives city government a lot of local control over how things run. The police, for instance, normally report to the mayor and city council. But home rule does allow for a federal police takeover for up to 30 days. That is what's happening now. So for now, the police are going to answer to Attorney General Pam Bondi instead of the mayor and city council.
I spoke to Vanessa Batters-Thompson about this. She runs the D.C. Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. And she said, you know, there's - a lot is unknown. But this takeover could mean more arrests, especially of homeless people and young people, and it could change how the police do their jobs.
VANESSA BATTERS-THOMPSON: The police currently do have policies. It's important to know that they write those policies. So if leadership changes, the policies and the practices of the department could also change.
ANDERSON: So for instance, she said the criteria used by police for stopping and searching someone, that could change. And the longer the takeover goes on, the more likely it is that we would see policy changes. We just don't know yet. At the press conference this morning, though, Trump said he wants to do the same thing in other major cities - Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, New York. But Batters-Thompson said there really isn't any legal authority for Trump to federalize local police in other cities. It's because of D.C.'s lack of statehood that this is possible. But the National Guard, you know, that's a different story.
KELLY: It is a different story, and I want to focus on precedent here. Tom Bowman, there is precedent. The National Guard has been out on the streets of American cities many times over the years, including very recently in LA.
BOWMAN: You know, you're right - you know, in the 1992 riots in Los Angeles and after the Rodney King beating or in Minneapolis after George Floyd's murder. But in this case - they had certain places to go. There was crime or whatever or protest there, so there were certain places to go. In this case, sending a hundred to 200 guardsmen into the city to bring down crime? Unless you're going to actually go on patrol, it's hard to see what effect this will really have.
KELLY: That is NPR's Tom Bowman, and we've also been speaking with NPR's Meg Anderson. Thanks to you both. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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