Donald Trump falsely claimed that crime in Washington DC is “the worst it’s ever been” on Thursday, amid a federal takeover of the city’s police department and deployment of the national guard and federal agents in the city.
“Washington DC is at its worst point,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “It will soon be at its best point.” He also baselessly accused DC law enforcement officials of giving “phony crime stats” and said “they’re under investigation”.
The president’s comments came after protesters heckled federal law enforcement officials as they reportedly stopped dozens of cars at a checkpoint along a busy street in Washington DC on Wednesday night.
About 20 law enforcement officers, some of whom appeared to be from the Department of Homeland Security, pulled over drivers for infractions such as broken taillights and not wearing seatbelts, according to the Washington Post.
At least one woman was reportedly arrested as more than 100 protesters gathered and reportedly yelled things like “get off our streets”, according to NBC News. Some protesters began warning drivers to avoid the area, the outlet reported.
The city’s homeless encampments, which Trump has long fixated on, came under target Thursday night as city police began removing residents. Officials in Washington DC and advocates for the unhoused had warned people living in camps to relocate to shelters before the federal sweeps began.
“We do not have enough shelter beds for everyone on the street,” said Amber W Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. “This is a chaotic and scary time for all of us in DC, but particularly for people without homes.”
Nearly 800 national guard troops have begun arriving in the city this week, and the Department of Defense said on Thursday about 200 national guard members at a time would be on the streets to support federal and local police.
The White House said officials have made more than 100 arrests since Trump announced the takeover on Monday. The Metropolitan police department (MPD) said it made 74 arrests on Wednesday and has made 217 arrests since Monday.
The chief of the MPD also reportedly issued an executive order on Thursday allowing the department to notify Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents about undocumented immigrants they find during traffic stops. Previously, the department could not report immigrants to Ice if they had not been charged with a crime.
Trump on Thursday called it a “great step”, declining to say whether he pressured the police department to enter into the agreement. “I think that’s going to happen all over the country,” he said.
The attorney general, Pam Bondi, named Terry Cole – the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration – to be Washington’s “emergency police commissioner”, a significant move on Thursday evening that increases national control over the city.
She said the MPD “must receive approval from commissioner Cole” before issuing any orders. It was not immediately clear where the move left Pamela Smith, the city’s current police chief, who works for the mayor.
DC’s Home Rule Act of 1973 allows the president to take control of the city’s police force for 30 days for “federal purposes” that the president “may deem necessary and appropriate”. Trump has suggested he will seek to extend that past 30 days. Doing so would require authorization from Congress.
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Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, said on Wednesday that his party would not support Trump’s efforts to extend the takeover. “No fucking way,” Schumer said during a podcast interview with Aaron Parnas. “We’ll fight him tooth and nail.”
If Congress does not grant the extension, Trump suggested he could declare an emergency to unilaterally extend the takeover.
“If it’s a national emergency we can do it without Congress, but we expect to be before Congress very quickly,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Trump has portrayed the US capital as crime-ridden. However, violent crime in DC hit a 30-year low in 2024 after a spike in 2023.
“We don’t live in a dirty city,” Washington DC’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, told community groups earlier this week. “We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks. We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story.”
Phil Mendelson, a Democrat serving as the chair of the Washington DC city council, told the Washington Post that despite Trump’s politicization of the takeover, the relationship between law enforcement agencies had actually been collaborative.
“I think collaborating with MPD and providing additional resources can only be for the good,” he said. “But the president has a national platform, and he’s painted the city as a cesspool of crime. We know that’s not true, but that is damaging to the city.”
