President Donald Trump on Monday formally declared a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C. The president said he is putting the city's police department under federal control and ordering the National Guard to deploy to the nation's capital "to help reestablish law, order and public safety."
"Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals," Trump said.
Trump formally declared a public safety emergency and compared crime in the American capital with that in other major cities, saying Washington performs poorly on safety relative to the capitals of Iraq, Brazil and Colombia, among others.
“This is Liberation Day in D.C. and we’re gonna take our capital back,” Trump said from the podium, flanked by top members of his administration, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.
“We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the president of the United States, I’m officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act … and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control,” the president said.
Trump said 800 National Guard troops will be deployed to D.C.
“We will work alongside all D.C. police and federal law enforcement,” Hegseth said, adding that the National Guard will be “flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.”
In a post to Truth Social, Trump wrote:
Washington, D.C. will be LIBERATED today! Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER! I quickly fixed the Border (ZERO ILLEGALS in last 3 months!), D.C. is next!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJTTrump said the murder rate in the U.S. capital is higher than in some of the world's worst crime-infested cities.
“You wanna be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe, and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something, and you don’t have that now,” Trump said. “The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City … some other places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth, much higher.”
Trump also said that his administration has started removing homeless encampments “from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks.”
“We're getting rid of the slums, too,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. would not lose its cities and that Washington was just a start.
Trump indicated that the law-enforcement plan could be used in other cities.
“We have other cities also that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem,” he said. “We’re not gonna let it happen. We’re not gonna lose our cities over this. This will go further. We’re starting very strongly with D.C. and we’re gonna clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.”
“If the capital is dirty, the whole country is dirty,” he said.
The president has already sent out 450 officers from 18 different federal agencies, including the FBI and the Secret Service, to conduct patrols in high-traffic areas throughout D.C. A total of 120 FBI agents have been temporarily reassigned to night patrol of various neighborhoods at D.C., according to a report from The Washington Post.
Trump’s long desire to use the National Guard for law enforcement, especially in the nation’s capital, was only exacerbated by the recent attack against a former DOGE staffer, Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, who a group of teenagers savagely beat during a late-night carjacking in downtown D.C.
“They are not afraid of law enforcement because they know nothing ever happens to them, but it’s going to happen now,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
