WASHINGTON — D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser mentioned Monday that President Donald Trump’s takeover of town’s police division is “unsettling and unprecedented,” even when it tracks with a few of the president’s false assaults on town’s crime price.
“I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” Bowser mentioned at a press convention. “I can say to D.C. residents that we will continue to operate our government in a way that makes you proud … We will work with the federal government to do the things that they should do for the city.”
Bowser’s occasion got here hours after Trump, himself a convicted felon who this 12 months pardoned a whole bunch of violent felons who assaulted cops on his behalf on Jan. 6, 2021, introduced he’s deploying Nationwide Guard troops and taking management of town’s police pressure to fight crime, which he falsely declared is “totally out of control.”
Actually, D.C.’s violent crime price is at a 30-year low.
Remarkably, in her practically 45-minute press occasion, Bowser didn’t as soon as condemn Trump for seizing management of the police and infringing on her position as mayor. As a substitute, she mentioned she’s merely following the legislation, particularly the House Rule Act, which permits presidents to briefly management D.C.’s police in emergency conditions. Trump is falsely claiming town’s crime price is such an emergency.
She isn’t improper that the president has this authority, for 30 days. However Bowser was blasé about his lies about D.C.’s crime price being so dangerous that it warrants an emergency declaration. She additionally didn’t tackle the chilling impact Trump’s militarization of town might have on D.C.’s greater than 700,000 residents, most of whom are Black and brown individuals.
Bowser and D.C. police chief Pamela Smith each tried to border Trump’s federalization of the D.C. police as one thing like a workforce effort, the place native police can be working alongside federal officers to root out crime. Smith made some extent to say she has lengthy had working relationships with federal officers, and that she anticipated them to proceed.
However the mayor pushed again at one level when requested if she expects Trump’s takeover to play out in the identical manner that native and federal officers workforce up for particular occasions within the metropolis.
“It’s not like that,” she mentioned flatly. “I don’t want to minimize what was said, and I don’t want to minimize the intrusion on our autonomy.”
Throughout Trump’s first time period, Bowser privately testified to Congress in 2022 that it “would be a complete disaster” if Trump federalized the D.C. police at the moment, in response to racial justice protests. She additionally warned she might “lose the city” to violence. She was requested Monday if she feels that manner now.
“I’m going to work every day to make sure it’s not a complete disaster,” Bowser replied. “What could be a disaster? If people who aren’t committing crimes are antagonized into committing crimes. That would be a disaster.”
“We are going to work every day to get this emergency put to an end,” she added. “I’ll call it ‘the so-called-emergency.’”
Different D.C. leaders had harsher phrases. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) known as Trump’s actions “an historic assault on D.C. home rule” that D.C. residents don’t help.
“It does not escape me that the president is calling in the [D.C. National Guard] on the pretext of a surge in crime that the numbers do not support, while he was nowhere to be found for hours on January 6, 2021, as D.C. officials tried to get him to mobilize the [D.C. National Guard] as the U.S. Capitol was under siege,” she mentioned in a press release. “The [D.C. National Guard] should be under control of D.C.’s chief executive, the same way governors control their Guard units.”
Brian Schwalb, D.C.’s lawyer common, known as Trump’s actions “unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful.”
“There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in DC reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year,” Schwalb mentioned on social media. “We are considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.”
Members of Congress from the capital area additionally issued a joint assertion condemning Trump’s actions.
“Donald Trump has personally incited more crime in Washington D.C. than perhaps anyone else living,” they wrote. “Trump’s ‘temporary’ takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department is not intended to prevent crime, it is a soft launch of authoritarianism.”
The assertion, which lumps Trump’s newest actions into his sample of “seeking showy displays of power,” is signed by Democratic Reps. Don Beyer (Va.), Steny Hoyer (Md.), Jamie Raskin (Md.), Jennifer McClellan (Va.), Glenn Ivey (Md.), Suhas Subramanyam (Va.), Eugene Vindman (Va.) and April McClain Delaney (Md.).
