The Metropolitan Police along with federal agencies tasked with helping curb crime in the nation’s capital are scrambling to figure out roles and strategy following President Donald Trump’s decision to declare a crime emergency and federalize DC’s police force, multiple sources told CNN.
“We’re going to restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “It’s going to be something very special.”
But little communication seems to have been done before Trump’s news conference – the Washington, DC, mayor and police chief hadn’t been told about the takeover until they watched Trump say it live. It’s led to confusion over who now leads the MPD, how their policing strategy will change and in what ways federal agents – many who aren’t trained for community policing – are going to interact with local officers.
During a separate news conference, Mayor Muriel Bowser said she was trying to set up a meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump said would be overseeing the implementation of his order. She also maintained that Chief of Police Pamela Smith would still run the department and report to Bowser up through the deputy mayor.
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser speaks as Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith, on stage third left, and DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly, on stage second right, listen during a news conference on August 11 in Washington, DC. – Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
“Nothing about our organizational chart has changed,” Bowser said. “And nothing in the executive order would indicate otherwise.”
This is the first time a president has used Section 740 of the Home Rule Act to federalize the DC metro police, said Dr. Heidi Bonner, chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at East Carolina University.
“It’s definitely difficult to say what that means,” she said, including it being “an open question” as to who’s in charge.
“Is the chief of police still in charge of the department once it’s become federalized?” Bonner asked. “And of course, all this is mixed up in the unique nature of DC as a district and not a state. There are different authorities – the president acts as the governor for all intents and purposes when it comes from the National Guard.”
Bowser seemed resigned to the fact that Trump’s decision would go into effect given the city’s status. Prominent Democrats called Bowser and her office Monday to offer support but indicated there was little they could do to stop the takeover.
“I don’t want to minimize what was said and I don’t want to minimize the intrusion on our autonomy,” Bowser said. The mayor also called the move “unsettling and unprecedented” and advocated for DC statehood to prevent such unilateral action from the president.
Police Chief Smith said she was scheduled to meet with federal liaisons following the news conference for the first time regarding Trump’s announcement in order to start to “create an operational plan.”
DC National Guard and FBI agents on the ground
Trump activated 800 soldiers from the DC National Guard, with up to 200 members being assigned to supporting law enforcement, according to the Defense Department.
“Duties for those personnel include administrative and logistical roles, as well as providing a physical presence in support of law enforcement,” the DOD said.
FBI agents patrol the areas of U Street in Washington, DC, on August 10. – Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
The unilateral move contrasts heavily with how Trump blamed others, including Bowser and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not deploying the National Guard on January 6, 2021, before Trump-supporters broke into the US Capitol.
Over the weekend, Trump had already moved officers from several federal agencies to begin assisting MPD in policing certain areas in DC, including as many as 130 FBI agents to patrol with DC police as part of the increased federal presence, according to two people familiar with the deployment.
It’s not typical for FBI agents to patrol with local police, and agents are often not trained for community policing and operate under different policies – including for use of deadly force – that could create issues on the ground, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. Because of this, pairing federal agents with officers to patrol DC could present a situation where each member of the team must respond differently to a potential threat based on the respective agency’s policy.
In the FBI, the plan to deploy agents to patrol the streets of Washington has been met with concern over strained resources and the safety of agents who are not trained in routine police patrols, according to multiple sources.
Taking agents away from their daily investigations to patrol DC would risk not adequately addressing other serious crimes like terrorism, foreign counterintelligence threats, cyber intrusions and the nation’s fentanyl epidemic, sources said.
“This isn’t hard: If we’re doing (policing) we’re not covering down on those other threats,” said one source.
Federal agents are also typically only minimally trained in conducting vehicle stops, which remains one of the most dangerous aspects of a police officer’s job. Unlike routine police encounters with suspects, which may only involve one or two officers, when agencies like the FBI conduct an arrest, they typically plan out the operation methodically in advance and execute it with a complement of agents that far outnumbers the suspect.
During the two sparring news conferences Monday, Trump remained adamant that crime in Washington is out of control despite data suggesting that it has decreased in recent years, and Bowser said firmly that DC is “not experiencing a spike in crime but a decrease in crime.”
Regardless of the current crime rates, Bonner noted that Trump’s order has a 30-day limit and said any long-term impact on crime is doubtful.
“You can’t have a long-term effect on crime with fast actions like this because it doesn’t get to the root causes,” Bonner said. “At the end of 30 days, it will be interesting to see what it has done in terms of reducing the crime rate further, or whatever the goals of this operation are, and what they might try to do moving forward to affect some long term fixes.”
“Because, again, you’re not going to affect crime in the long term without addressing the symptoms of crimes,” Bonner said.
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