The United States armed forces are gearing up to call National Guard troops into action across Washington, D.C. This initiative appears to be part of President Trump’s larger push to address the issue of urban crime afflicting the city. As of early Monday of this week, no formal mobilization orders had been issued by the President. However, it has been anticipated that an announcement detailing the deployment of possibly several hundred D.C. National Guardsmen will be made soon.
The Guardsmen are projected to work co-operatively with law enforcement officers in Washington’s administrative districts in a supporting capacity. As of Monday, the specifics of their intended duties remained undisclosed to the public. Even though Washington, D.C. has seen a downward trend in its rates of criminal activity in recent years, President Trump has often voiced his concern over what he perceives as an escalating situation, going so far as to suggest a necessity for federal intervention.
While information sourced from Reuters prior to this announcement suggested the possibility of the National Guard’s activation, it should be noted that these troops are not likely to be bestowed with powers to arrest. Instead, their role will be to assist and bolster the efforts of law enforcement personnel, potentially freeing them for other patrol-related tasks. Simultaneously, the Trump administration has expressed plans to redeploy roughly 120 FBI agents in Washington onto night-time patrols as part of Trump’s blueprint for reducing crime.
A majority of these agents are expected to be drawn from their routine roles at the FBI’s Washington field office. This move forms part of the administration’s strategy for crime control, which seems to focus on providing additional resources to law enforcement units during their busy hours. The activation of the troops in Washington, D.C. follows precedent; there was a similar large-scale deployment of National Guard personnel in Los Angeles earlier this summer.
Nearly 5,000 National Guard members were deployed to Los Angeles with the specific mandate to aid in managing the protests that had flared up due to immigration raids and to secure the safety of the federal agents carrying out these operations. Since then, the majority of these troops have been pulled out, with only about 250 remaining on duty. The circumstances surrounding the use of National Guard personnel in Washington, however, are different, given the unique administrative structure of the federal district.
Throughout his initial term, President Trump has shown a readiness to use National Guard soldiers and federal law enforcement personnel to address candidly peaceful demonstrations, notably during the Black Lives Matter protests following the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in 2020. With D.C. being a federal district and not a state, the authority to manage the District of Columbia’s National Guard troops falls solely to the president.
This provides the president with far-reaching powers to call the National Guard into action. The activation of the National Guard in Washington, therefore, might be considered less of an intervention and more of an assertion of authority previously held but seldom used by presidents. As such, the National Guard’s forthcoming engagement signifies the ongoing commitment of the current administration to tackling crime rates.
The post Trump’s Strategy: National Guard Activation in D.C. for Crime Control appeared first on Real News Now.
About Author
