In January, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia issued a press release concerning crime in Washington, D.C.
It reads: “Total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).”
But you wouldn’t think the nation’s capital started the year with crime at an all-time low if you’d been listening to the president in recent weeks. On Aug. 11, the Trump administration took over Washington’s police force and sent in hundreds of National Guard troops to crack down on “violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people.”
District residents took to the streets, yelling “go home, fascists” at the federal officers who set up a checkpoint at the popular 14th Street northwest corridor. When I was interning in the Washington metro area over the summer, I received the warning — “don’t go to 14th Street this week.”
Federal troops were stationed at other locations, including Union Station, the White House, the National Mall, Navy Yard and Massachusetts Avenue. The chilling effect was immediate. In a city already experiencing economic contraction from federal funding and job cuts, small businesses have taken another hit in this latest episode.
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Restaurant reservations were down 31% compared to the same time last year. Some small businesses reported seeing half of their revenue drop during the first week of federal occupation.
But I shouldn’t have to make an economic argument to say that this decision by the president is a bad one. It’s an existentially horrific one, one that takes the United States another step toward a police state. The goal here is hardly to fight crime (again, the crime was low to begin with) but to create a state of fear and submission in the nation’s capital — and beyond.
On Aug. 22, the president talked about expanding to Chicago next and then on to New York. Cities that, of course, have had lower violent crime in recent years. Why target Chicago and New York City when Memphis, Tennessee, and Cleveland, Ohio, have the highest urban crime rates in the country? I don’t think I need to speculate wildly on how the reds and blues on the electoral map have made all the difference. The president is punishing liberal cities.
His fanbase will cheer it on, since they relish the pain of their political opponents in urban, elite enclaves. However, should this operation expand, our country will suffer for it.
I’ve seen certain Republicans praise the deployment of federal troops in Washington, citing the fact that there have supposedly been zero homicides reported in the first two weeks of occupation.
Maybe it’s true that in a police state, there are fewer homicides. But there are also fewer liberties. People are afraid to leave their homes. They don’t want to have to stop at military checkpoints. They don’t want to be interrupted and asked for their identification papers by men in full military gear. They don’t want their children to see weapons of war every day on their streets.
It’s already happening in our nation’s capital.
“We don’t want to feel like we are in North Korea,” said a protester in Washington.
I remember ahead of the June military parade — Donald Trump’s birthday parade — when the president said to his own citizens: “For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force … This is people that hate our country.”
The message is: Anyone who protests the president hates our country and must be met with force. Liberal cities that did not vote for the president need to be punished. Masked, unidentifiable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and federal troops need to disappear people and patrol our neighborhoods to keep us safe from a “crime emergency.”
The real emergency is the overreach of executive power and the state violence that the president intends to escalate and export to cities nationwide. I pray that the so-called libertarians and anti-big government folks will get their heads out of their you-know-wheres and see this for what it is. But I’m not holding my breath.
Left of center folks need to keep fighting, and elected Democrats need to abandon the “it’s all a distraction” rhetoric to start calling this what it is: a growing, lethal crack in our fragile democracy. It’s always been fragile.
“A republic, if you can keep it,” said Benjamin Franklin.
These four years will be one of our strongest tests — if we can keep it.
Grace is a graduate student studying urban planning.
