WASHINGTON — D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Monday that President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s police department is “unsettling and unprecedented,” even if it tracks with some of the president’s false attacks on the city’s crime rate.
“I can’t say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised,” Bowser said at a press conference. “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 event came hours after Trump, himself a convicted felon who this year pardoned hundreds of violent felons who assaulted police officers on his behalf on Jan. 6, 2021, announced he is deploying National Guard troops and taking control of the city’s police force to combat crime, which he falsely declared is “totally out of control.”
In fact, D.C.’s violent crime rate is at a 30-year low.
Remarkably, in her nearly 45-minute press event, Bowser didn’t once condemn Trump for seizing control of the police and infringing on her role as mayor. Instead, she said she’s simply following the law, specifically the Home Rule Act, which allows presidents to temporarily control D.C.’s police in emergency situations. Trump is falsely claiming the city’s crime rate is such an emergency.
She isn’t wrong that the president has this authority, for 30 days. But Bowser was blasé about his lies about D.C.’s crime rate being so bad that it warrants an emergency declaration. She also didn’t address the chilling effect Trump’s militarization of the city could have on D.C.’s more than 700,000 residents, most of whom are Black and brown people.
Bowser and D.C. police chief Pamela Smith both tried to frame Trump’s federalization of the D.C. police as something like a team effort, where local police would be working alongside federal officials to root out crime. Smith made a point to say she has long had working relationships with federal officials, and that she expected them to continue.
But the mayor pushed back at one point when asked if she expects Trump’s takeover to play out in the same way that local and federal officials team up for special events in the city.
“It’s not like that,” she said flatly. “I don’t want to minimize what was said, and I don’t want to minimize the intrusion on our autonomy.”
During Trump’s first term, Bowser privately testified to Congress in 2022 that it “would be a complete disaster” if Trump federalized the D.C. police at that time, in response to racial justice protests. She also warned she could “lose the city” to violence. She was asked Monday if she feels that way 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.’”
Other D.C. leaders had harsher words. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) called Trump’s actions “an historic assault on D.C. home rule” that D.C. residents don’t support.
“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 said in a statement. “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 attorney general, called 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 said 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 region also issued a joint statement 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 statement, which lumps Trump’s latest actions into his pattern 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.).