President Trump declared a crime emergency in the District of Columbia in a lengthy press conference on Monday. The president was flanked by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, FBI director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and DoD secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump declared August 11 “D.C. Liberation Day,“ the day he said he would “take our Capitol back.”
The announcement came on the heels of a new executive order declaring a crime emergency in the District. Importantly, the order invokes the D.C. Home Rule Act (Section 740 of the D.C. Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act) that requires the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to provide services “for federal purposes.” The order delegates operational control for those federal purposes to Bondi and aims to restore safety for federal workers, residents, and the tens of millions of visitors who come to the nation’s capital each year.
Specifically, under Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, the president can direct the D.C. mayor to make MPD officers available for federal needs to protect federal buildings and monuments, secure the National Mall and Capitol area, and ensure the functioning of the federal government. The new order immediately places those deployments under the attorney general’s direction, creating a single federal chain of command for MPD’s work on those assignments.
From a practical standpoint, the president’s order means streamlined, coordinated saturation patrols and quicker joint operations with the U.S. Park Police, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Federal Protective Service across the city. It aims to shorten response times, reduce confusion over jurisdiction during fast-moving incidents, and expand the footprint of policing during peak hours citywide.
There are, however, guardrails. By law, the president must notify key congressional leaders to extend such use beyond 48 hours. That service ends when the emergency ends or after 30 days unless extended by Congress. In short, the authority is potent but time-limited.
The president has ordered law enforcement to sharpen its focus on D.C.’s visitor corridors – –National Mall museums, Capitol grounds, federal office buildings, and Metro hubs. As such, there will be increased law enforcement presence where tourists, families, commuters, and government employees are most exposed to robberies, carjackings, and thefts.
Notably, D.C.’s auto theft rate topped the nation in 2024, according to the August 11 White House fact sheet, with vehicle theft in D.C. being “over three times the national average.” According to 2024 National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) statistics, D.C. has “842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents,” compared with the “national average of 250.2 thefts per 100,000 residents.” Trump shared data showing D.C. is now ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in the world, outpacing cities like Mexico City and Los Angeles. Trump said he would deploy whatever was needed to rein in the rampant crime.
According to the August 11, 2025 E.O., “the magnitude of the violent crime places the District of Columbia among the most violent jurisdictions in the United States.” It goes on to state that the District of Columbia is by some measures, among the top 20 percent of the most dangerous cities in the world” and has a “higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rate than all 50 states.”
According to a January 3, 2025 DOJ press release on crime, D.C. made progress in 2024. Data show that violent crime allegedly fell 35% from 2023, reaching a 30-year low. However, Trump and others have alluded to manipulation of the crime stats, purportedly to make the city appear safer than it really is. A D.C. police commander was allegedly placed on leave for “deliberately” falsifying crime data in the District.
Reportedly, crime data are being manipulated by downgrading offenses. According to NBC News, Fraternal Order of the Police chairman Gregg Pemberton claimed in July that officers are directed “to take a report for a lesser offense” at the scene of the crime.
So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking. They will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.
When management officials are directing officers to take reports for felony assault, or if they’re going back into police databases and changing offenses to felony assault, felony assault is not a category of crime that’s listed on the department’s daily crime stats. It’s also not something that’s a requirement of the FBI’s uniform crime reporting program. So, by changing criminal offenses from, for example, ADW bat or ADW gun to felony assault, that would avoid both the MPD and the FBI from reporting that as a part one or a felony offense.
In D.C., youth reportedly commit crimes with impunity. One expert on crime, Charles “Cully” Stimson, senior legal fellow and deputy director of the Meese Center, wrote that the criminal justice system in D.C. is “sclerotic” and “doesn’t take gun crimes seriously.” He says the city’s “dismal record” is in part due to the low likelihood of being arrested for carrying a pistol without a license. He cites data showing that only 1.7% are sentenced to prison. Moreover, the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office is “woefully understaffed,” according to Stimson.
In an August 7 interview with Laura Ingraham, Pirro mentioned that “gangs of youth” are “coddled” in D.C., sharing that prosecutors are prevented from punishing criminal youth. Instead, their cases go to family court, where the “effort is rehabilitation.”
In Monday’s press conference, Pirro confirmed Stimson’s theory of the case, asserting that young men with illegal guns are not being punished properly for their crimes. In fact, they are often untouchable. Pirro added,
I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the hell out of you or anyone else. ... They know that we can’t touch them, and why? Because the laws are weak. I can’t touch you if you are 14, 15, 16 or 17 years old.”
I convict someone of shooting another person with an illegal gun on a public bus in the chest with an intent to kill. I convict him, and you know what? The judge gives him probation and says he should go to college. We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of no cash bail. We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.
President Trump told reporters the “dire public safety crisis stems directly from the abject failures of the city’s local leadership and a radical-left city council.” He also asserted that no cash bail is a root policy that must be changed. “No cash bail,” said Trump, allows “somebody to murder somebody and they are out on no cash bail before the day is out.” He mentioned the need to encourage Republican legislators to change the statutes that allow for the practice, claiming that cities like New York and Chicago are in their current condition because criminals go free with little immediate consequence for their behavior.
Image via Picryl.