POLICINGThe Data Doesn’t Support Trump’s Justification for Deploying the National Guard
The president has taken over policing in Washington, D.C., and threatened to do the same in other Democratic-led cities. An analysis by The Trace shows that his claims of runaway violence are false.
This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.
In an effort to quell what he claims is an out-of-control crime problem in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump announced on August 11 that his administration planned to deploy National Guard troops and take over the district’s police force.
The plan called for 800 National Guard members to be sent to the city, and troops have already begun appearing on the streets, alongside FBI agents and other federal law enforcement. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is effectively in charge of the Metropolitan Police Department, as the capital’s police agency is known. The U.S. Park Police has been tasked with the removal of homeless encampments.
Trump claimed the nation’s capital has been “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals” and suggested that he might expand federal intervention to other major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Chicago.
But crime is not out of control in these cities — in fact, it’s decreasing. Below, we fact-check the president’s claims.
What the Data Says About D.C.
If Washington, D.C., was a state, it would have had the highest rate of gun homicide in the country in each of the past seven years, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Part of the capital’s unenviable ranking stems from how unusual it is as a jurisdiction. It’s not a state, and it’s also not like most cities — it contains mostly a dense urban core, without the suburban and rural areas that help bring down most statewide averages. In fact, the capital is more geographically concentrated than many other large cities, which makes direct comparisons tricky. Several other cities — including Memphis, St. Louis, and Kansas City, Missouri, all in Republican-led states — have significantly higher homicide rates than Washington.
“It is true that D.C. has a chronic violent crime challenge,” Thomas Abt, a criminologist and senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, told The Trace. “But it’s also true that it is by no means the worst city or the most dangerous city in the United States.”
