President Trump declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., this morning and has put Terry Cole, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in charge of the dangerous city’s police department.

Speaking at a news conference, Trump said he had deployed the National Guard to fight crime. “Bloodthirsty criminals” and “roving mobs of wild youth” are running rampant in the city’s streets, he said.

The White House also published Trump’s executive order on the matter.

The order follows a melee among “juveniles” at the Washington Navy Yard, which included a shooting. No one was injured. Last week, two other “juveniles” were arrested in connection with a brutal attack on a staff member of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump took control of the cops under presidential authority granted in the city’s Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act, also known as the Home Rule Act, imprudently passed in 1973 to give city elected officials more power to run it.

“Crime is out of control in the District of Columbia,” the order says, observing that the city government has failed “to maintain public order and safety,” which in turn “has had a dire impact on the Federal Government’s ability to operate efficiently to address the Nation’s broader interests without fear of our workers being subjected to rampant violence.”

The order offered the crime data:

The District of Columbia now has a higher violent crime, murder, and robbery rate than all 50 States, recording a homicide rate in 2024 of 27.54 per 100,000 residents. It also experienced the Nation’s highest vehicle theft rate with 842.4 thefts per 100,000 residents — over three times the national average of 250.2 thefts per 100,000 residents. The District of Columbia is, by some measures, among the top 20 percent of the most dangerous cities in the world.

A fact sheet that accompanies the order elaborates, noting the recent murders of two embassy employees and a congressional intern, as well the beating of the former DOGEr.

“Washington, DC’s 2024 murder rate (27.54 per 100K) is higher than Bogota (15.1), Mexico City (10.6), Islamabad (9.2), Lima (7.6), and even major capitals like Paris (1.64), London (1.1), and Madrid (0.96),” the fact sheet says.

“Such lawlessness also poses intolerable risks to the vital Federal functions that take place in the District of Columbia,” the order says.

Thus, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi will oversee city law enforcement, with Cole, again, in charge of the cops. 

The Defense Department will dispatch 800 National Guardsmen to assist police. Also involved in the effort will be 120 FBI agents temporarily sent on night patrols, The New York Times reported, citing an anonymous administration source.

The Times offered this considered opinion in its report, noting that Trump had also detailed agents to help immigration enforcement:

It can be challenging for F.B.I. agents to make meaningful contributions to such assignments, given that the bureau’s agents are investigators not trained in patrol-focused policing. Many others are inexperienced in handling immigration cases. F.B.I. agents on such assignments are often used to provide additional security on the street, while other law enforcement officers do their jobs.

Whether the FBI will seek the Times’s guidance in helping police the streets in unclear.

Trump most likely reacted because of the car-jacking and Navy Yard rumble.

A mob of “youths” attacked former DOGer Edward Coristine, 19, at about 3:00 a.m. on August 4 in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood, Fox News reported.

“Police said Coristine pushed the woman into the vehicle for safety and turned to confront the group,” Fox reported:

At least several of the teens then attacked him, police said, until officers patrolling nearby intervened. As officers moved toward the group, the teens fled on foot.

Coristine, one of the most visible figures of President Donald Trump’s DOGE, was left bloodied in the attack, according to a photo the president shared on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday.

The assault prompted Trump to threaten to federalize Washington, D.C., calling for local minors and gang members over the age of 14 to be prosecuted as adults.

“Somebody from DOGE was very badly hurt last night,” Trump said:

A young man who was beat up by a bunch of thugs in D.C. And either they’re going to straighten their act out … or we’re going to have to federalize and run it the way it’s supposed to be run.

Cops arrested only two of the “youths.”

Then came the “juvenile” rampage at the Navy Yard. That led the city to impose a curfew, which “began Sunday at 8 p.m. and dovetails into the citywide curfew from 11 p.m. through 6 a.m. all summer,” WTOP reported. The curfew also includes a “zone,” which “prohibits teens 17 and under from gathering in a group of nine or more in any public place, or on the premises of any establishment unless part of an exempted activity.”

While the Times noted that “violent crime in the city hit a 30-year low last year and is down another 26 percent so far this year,” which is technically true, the city is far from safe, the city’s data also show.

Annual homicidesin D.C. went from 160 in 2018 to 274 in 2023 before decreasing to 187 last year. And last year’s figure means someone was murdered about every other day. While homicides might have dropped from last year, they were just 88 in 2012.

Trump wrongly said the city’s murder or homicide rate is the “highest rate probably ever.” It was much worse in the 1990s during the reign of drug kingpin Rayful Edmond, who nearly singlehandedly inaugurated a crack-cocaine epidemic. In 1991, 482 people were murdered.