Americans should be proud to walk the streets of their capital—not ashamed or afraid.
President Donald Trump’s decision to take over the Washington, D.C. police force and mobilize the District’s National Guard marks an overdue step in restoring America’s capital city to its former greatness. This will allow the federal government to now be positioned to arrest D.C.’s backsliding on crime and safety.
The nation’s capital should be a source of pride for all Americans. Instead, it has become an international embarrassment, with crime rates eclipsing many capitals in much poorer, more dangerous countries.
“The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogotá, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth,” Trump said in his announcement to invoke Section 740 of the 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act, which allows the president to assume operational control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department.
He’s correct. The homicide rate in the U.S. is 6.8 per 100,000 residents. In Colombia, it’s 25.4, and in Mexico, it’s 19.3.
Yet, in 2024, D.C. recorded 187 homicides—a rate of 27 per 100,000 residents. This is not only higher than Colombia and Mexico overall but nearly double Bogotá—15 per 100,000—and more than double Mexico City—11 per 100,000.
Compared with other first-world countries, D.C. is a murder cesspool. In Berlin, the homicide rate in 2024 was only 1.4 per 100,000 residents. In London, it was 1.2 in 2023. In Tokyo, the homicide rate is just 0.2.
But getting murdered or assaulted isn’t all someone has to fear when walking or driving the streets of D.C. Last year, the city recorded 2,113 robberies and 5,139 automobile thefts.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Although D.C. has always been a high-crime city, as recently as 2012, the city experienced fewer than 100 homicides, its lowest in over half a century.
Federalizing Law Enforcement Makes Visitors and Residents Safer
Invoking Section 740 doesn’t only make the city safer for federal workers and D.C. locals; it also means Americans everywhere will be able to travel to their nation’s capital without worrying about venturing out of the tourist areas and the select “safe” neighborhoods on the city’s west side.
In the 1990s and the first half of the early 2000s, D.C. became known as the “murder capital of the U.S.” Improved policing and city management brought the crime rate down, which boosted a mass young, middle-class migration into the city.
But the city did not achieve this on its own. In fact, the introduction of home rule in 1973 only led to a continual decline. In 1995—right after D.C. voters reelected the notoriously corrupt ex-convict Mayor Marion Barry—Congress introduced the Financial Control Board to oversee the city’s finances, including its police budget.
Opponents of Federal Takeover Don’t Have a Case
Fierce opposition to Trump’s move has come more strongly from national Democrats and liberal media looking for an opportunity to score political points than from D.C. leadership and residents.
As Trump made his announcement, the opposition media tried to play cute, simultaneously “fact-checking” his characterization of the city by showing how crime had recently fallen in D.C. Yet they omitted that the city’s homicide rate in 2023 surpassed 40 per 100,000, which then tied Detroit for third-highest in the nation.
The crime rate may have slightly fallen since 2023, but D.C. residents’ perception of it has not. Last year, a Washington Post poll found 65 percent of D.C. residents believed crime was “extremely serious,” compared with 56 percent the previous year.
Unlike during Trump’s first term, when anti-Trump protests became almost a daily ritual in D.C., street-level opposition this term—even to this move—remains weak.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s objections have so far seemed more performative than sincere, and the D.C. Council, local activists, and residents have not shown anywhere near the resistance-style opposition to this move as they did to Trump’s mere existence during his first term in office.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb falsely called the action “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,” claiming “there is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia.”
But less than 10 hours after Trump announced his decision, the city notched its 100th murder of the year, as a 33-year-old man was gunned down a mile away from the White House in the popular Logan Circle.
Meanwhile, D.C. Police Union chairman Greggory Pemberton supports Trump’s takeover. He said one reason MPD can’t get a handle on crime is that it’s short 800 police officers. He also blames the city council for tying the hands of local police in dealing with criminals.
A longtime D.C. resident and self-described Democrat told NBC News she agreed with Trump that the city has a crime problem. Like Pemberton, she blames the city council for letting crime get out of hand, but also blames the U.S. attorney’s office for failing to prosecute.
The day following Trump’s announcement, the newly mobilized task force had already made 43 arrests. MPD also announced a juvenile curfew for the Navy Yard neighborhood from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. for youths in groups of nine or more. This comes in addition to a citywide juvenile curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Trump’s bold intervention in Washington, D.C., through federal control of the police force and National Guard deployment, addresses a critical need to restore safety to the nation’s capital. This will protect residents and visitors but also return the capital as a symbol of national pride rather than a source of shame and derision. Despite partisan and media opposition, the early results signal a promising shift toward reclaiming the streets from violence. D.C. will not become as safe as London overnight and will never reach Tokyo status, but by the end of the year, it could at least return to its 2012 self.
Jacob Grandstaff is an investigative researcher for Restoration News, specializing in election integrity and labor policy.