Mayor Muriel Bowser disputes Donald Trump’s emergency narrative, citing crime decline; critics name deployment a political energy play.
Among the 800 Nationwide Guard members deployed by US President Donald Trump have began arriving within the nation’s capital, ramping up after the White Home ordered federal forces to take over the town’s police division and cut back crime in what the president known as – with out substantiation – a lawless metropolis.
The inflow on Tuesday got here the morning after Trump introduced he can be activating the guard members and taking on the division. He cited a criminal offense emergency – however referred to the identical crime that metropolis officers stress is already falling noticeably.
The president holds the authorized proper to make such strikes – to some extent.
The regulation lets Trump management the police division for a month, however how aggressive the federal presence will probably be and the way it might play out remained open questions as the town’s mayor and police chief went to the Justice Division to fulfill with the lawyer normal.
The assembly comes a day after Mayor Muriel Bowser mentioned Trump’s freshly introduced plan to take over the Metropolitan Police Division (MPD) and name within the Nationwide Guard was not a productive step. She calmly laid out the town’s case that crime has been dropping steadily and mentioned Trump’s perceived state of emergency merely doesn’t match the numbers.
She additionally flatly said that the capital metropolis’s fingers are tied and that her administration has little alternative however to conform. “We might contest that,” she mentioned of Trump’s definition of a criminal offense emergency, “however his authority is fairly broad.”
Bowser made a reference to Trump’s “so-called emergency” and concluded: “I’m going to work on daily basis to ensure it’s not an entire catastrophe.”
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, mentioned Trump has accused Democrats of being “weak on crime”.
“He singled out Democrat-run cities like Oakland – which is outdoors San Francisco – New York, Baltimore, even Chicago,” she mentioned. “Given the actual fact they’re run by Democrats … that is inflicting a bit little bit of concern.”
Democrats are calling the transfer “an influence seize”.
“Though they’re saying that is technically authorized, it’s a hostile takeover on condition that these powers have really by no means been executed in trendy historical past,” Halkett mentioned.
Trump’s bumpy relationship with DC
Whereas Trump invokes his plan by saying that “we’re going to take our capital again”, Bowser and the MPD keep that violent crime general in Washington has decreased to a 30-year low after a pointy rise in 2023.
Carjackings, for instance, dropped about 50 % in 2024 and are down once more this yr. Greater than half of these arrested, nonetheless, are juveniles, and the extent of these punishments is a degree of competition for the Trump administration.
“The White Home says crime could also be down, however that doesn’t imply that it’s not an issue and that violent crime exists at ranges which can be far too excessive,” Halkett mentioned.
Bowser, a Democrat, spent a lot of Trump’s first time period in workplace overtly sparring with the Republican president. She fended off his preliminary plans for a army parade by means of the streets and stood in public opposition when he known as in a multi-agency flood of federal regulation enforcement to confront anti-police brutality protesters in the summertime of 2020.
She later had the phrases “Black Lives Matter” painted in large yellow letters on the road a couple of block from the White Home.
In Trump’s second time period, backed by Republican management of each homes of Congress, Bowser has walked a public tightrope for months, emphasising frequent floor with the Trump administration on points such because the profitable effort to carry the Nationwide Soccer League’s (NFL’s) Washington Commanders again to the District of Columbia.
She watched with open concern for the town streets as Trump lastly obtained his army parade this summer time. Her choice to dismantle Black Lives Matter Plaza earlier this yr served as a neat metaphor for simply how a lot the facility dynamics between the 2 executives had advanced.
Now that fraught relationship enters uncharted territory as Trump has adopted by means of on months of what many DC officers had quietly hoped had been empty threats. The brand new standoff has solid Bowser in a sympathetic mild, even amongst her longtime critics.
“It’s an influence play and we’re a straightforward goal,” mentioned Clinique Chapman, CEO of the DC Justice Lab. A frequent critic of Bowser, whom she accuses of “over policing our youth” with the current expansions of Washington’s youth curfew, Chapman mentioned Trump’s newest transfer “isn’t about making a safer DC; it’s nearly energy”.