Trump exaggerates Washington, DC, crime while ordering police takeover and National Guard deployment

President Donald Trump said he is deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department.

The nation’s capital is "becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness," Trump said at an Aug. 11 press conference. "Washington, D.C., should be one of the safest, cleanest and most beautiful cities anywhere in the world, and we're going to make it that."

Many of the details Trump cited do not stand up to scrutiny.

Trump’s actions are a step toward making good on his threat of a federal takeover of the district after carjackers severely beat a former Department of Government Efficiency employee. 

News reports said the Trump administration is dispatching 120 FBI agents for overnight shifts. The FBI confirmed to PolitiFact that its district field office is participating but provided no further details.

In a news briefing after Trump’s announcement, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser said the district would cooperate with the federal government and added that she speaks with Trump often about the city’s progress on crime. "In fact, my first meeting with him after he was elected the second time, we went over the crime trends; we went over how we are seeing decreases, so the president is read in on our efforts," she said.

Can Trump invoke a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., under Section 740 of DC Home Rule Act?

Trump cannot take over the city without congressional approval. He is using an emergency provision to temporarily oversee the district’s police force.

The U.S. Constitution created the District of Columbia as a seat of the federal government. In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Home Rule Act, enabling district residents to elect a mayor and city council. The law gives the district autonomy for local governance, but the city still answers to Congress on matters including budgetary oversight and the ability to overturn local legislation.

Section 740 of the Home Rule Act allows the president to temporarily take control of the city’s police department during an emergency.

In an Aug. 11 executive order, Trump invoked Section 740, citing crime in the district as an emergency. The executive order says federal use of the district’s Metropolitan Police Department is needed to maintain law and order; protect federal buildings and monuments; and ensure "conditions necessary for the orderly functioning of the Federal Government."

Trump delegated operational control of the department to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The emergency powers cannot extend past 48 hours, the law says, unless the president notifies Congress in writing about the reason and the time period needed. If he notifies Congress, Trump can extend the emergency for up to 30 days.

Did Washington, D.C., homicides reach the highest rate ever in 2023? 

Trump said, "Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate, probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don't know what that means, because it just goes back 25 years. Can't be worse." 

Metropolitan Police Department data showed 274 homicides in 2023, the highest number over the past 20 years. Trump omitted that the department’s preliminary crime data shows homicides have declined 32% since 2023, to 187 in 2024.

The homicide rate continues to decline. This year through Aug. 11, homicide decreased by 12% compared with the same time period in 2024.

Jeff Asher, an analyst for AH Datalytics, told PolitiFact the homicide rate increased substantially after 2020, peaking in 2023 at 39 per 100,000 people. 

That was the highest rate since 2003, but far below the 1991 peak of 81 per 100,000 people. The falling rate matches national trends, Asher said.

White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said on X that the city police statistics are not as they seem. Cheung attached a July WRC-TV story about a district police commander’s May suspension after he was accused of altering crime statistics.

Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Gregg Pemberton told the TV station that union members and management said the command staff want to "make sure that these classifications of these reports are adjusted over time to make sure that the overall crime stats stay down."

A police spokesperson told PolitiFact that Commander Michael Pulliam is on administrative leave and the department can’t comment on active internal investigations. The union did not respond to our request for comment.

Have violent crimes such as carjacking increased in Washington, D.C.?

Trump said, "The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled." 

Trump is correct that the number of these crimes increased, but he did not mention a recent decline in carjackings.

The city’s dashboard shows carjackings rose from 2020 through 2023 before declining in 2024. This year, through Aug. 9, there have been 188 carjackings compared with 299 during the same time period in 2024, and compared with 607 in 2023, a police spokesperson told PolitiFact.

The city’s preliminary car theft data shows a 25% drop from 2023 to 2024, and car thefts are essentially flat year to date in 2025 compared with the same period last year.

"Auto theft increased a huge amount in DC after 2020 before surging again in 2023 following the video being posted showing how to steal certain models of Kia and Hyundai cars," Asher said. The "Kia Boyz" phenomenon happened nationwide. 

Overall, the city’s data shows that through Aug. 11 this year, compared with 2024, violent crime in the district declined by 26%. The Washington, D.C., violent crime decrease is part of a nationwide trend in major cities.

Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Anthony Walsh sets out steering wheel locks during an event where police officers distributed Apple AirTags and similar tracking devices to drivers in an attempt to curb a rise in crime in Washington on Nov. 7, 2023. (AP)

Does implementing cashless bail affect crime rates?

Trump said, "The radical left City Council adopted no cash bail. By the way, every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster." …Somebody murders somebody, and they're out on no cash bail before the day is out."  

"No cash bail" or "cashless bail" allows certain defendants awaiting trial to be released from custody without paying bail. Even with cashless bail laws in place, defendants accused of violent crimes such as murder, can still be detained if judges determine they are a public safety threat or flight risk.

Misdemeanor charges typically result in higher rates of release, according to the district’s Pretrial Services Agency. 

In 2024, 89% of defendants were not rearrested during the pre-trial period, the agency said.

Proponents of eliminating cash bail say it harms low-income people. Those who support cash bail say it ensures defendants appear in court and removing it threatens public safety. Washington, D.C., was a pioneer in pretrial reform, largely eliminating cash bail in the 1990s. 

There’s a lack of expert consensus on the impact of cashless bail on crime rates. 

A 2024 report by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law said researchers found "no statistically significant relationship" between bail reform and crime rates. The study looked at crime rate data from 2015 through 2021 for 33 cities across the U.S., 22 of which had implemented some type of bail reform.

The Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit that supports reducing the prison population, measured public safety before and after pretrial reforms in four states and nine cities and counties, including Washington, D.C. In general, researchers found that releasing people pretrial did not put communities at risk for more crime. 

The Trump administration has cited a 2022 report from the Yolo County, California, district attorney’s office as evidence that cashless bails cause increased crime. The report explored the effects of California’s temporary bail suspension during the COVID-19 pandemic, finding that 420 out of 595 people — 70.6% — were rearrested after being released from jail under this system.

A November 2024 paper by the Public Policy Institute of California also found that implementing emergency bail orders caused "notable increases in both the likelihood and number of rearrests within 30 days." However, once reversed, the return to cash bail did not affect the number of rearrests. 

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