Trump says he’s placing Washington police under federal control, deploying National Guard

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he's deploying the National Guard across Washington and taking over the city's police department in the hopes of reducing crime, even as the city's mayor has noted that crime is falling in the nation's capital.

The Republican president, who said he was formally declaring a public safety emergency, compared crime in the American capital with that in other major cities, saying Washington performs poorly on safety relative to the capitals of Iraq, Brazil and Colombia, among others.

Trump also said at his news briefing that his administration has started removing homeless encampments “from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks”.

“We're getting rid of the slums, too,” Trump said, adding that the US would not lose its cities and that Washington was just a start.

US Attorney General Pam Bondi will be taking over responsibility for Washington's metro police department, he said, while also complaining about potholes and graffiti in the city and calling them “embarrassing”.

For Trump, the effort to take over public safety in Washington reflects a next step in his law enforcement agenda after his aggressive push to stop illegal border crossings. But the move involves at least 500 federal law enforcement officials as well as the National Guard, raising fundamental questions about how an increasingly emboldened federal government will interact with its state and local counterparts.

Combating crime

The president has used his social media and White House megaphones to message that his administration is tough on crime, yet his ability to shape policy might be limited outside of Washington, which has a unique status as a congressionally established federal district. Nor is it clear how his push would address the root causes of homelessness and crime.

Trump said he is invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to deploy members of the National Guard.

About 500 federal law enforcement officers are being tasked with deploying throughout the nation's capital as part of the Trump administration's effort to combat crime, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday.

More than 100 FBI agents and about 40 agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are among federal law enforcement personnel being assigned to patrols in Washington, the person briefed on the plans said. The Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Marshals Service are also contributing officers.

The person was not authorised to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. The Justice Department didn't immediately have a comment on Monday morning.