Today, President Trump announced the deployment of the D.C. National Guard and that he would work with state governors to deploy other National Guard units to Washington, D.C. The President issued an executive order claiming a crime emergency in D.C., despite strong evidence to the contrary, and that the federal government would take control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under a section of the D.C. Home Rule Act. In January, the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that crime in DC is at a 30-year low.
In response, Legal Defense Fund (LDF) Associate Director-Counsel Todd A. Cox issued the following statement:
“President Trump is advancing a fictional story of a city that is overwhelming Black (nearly 45% of the D.C. population) beset by crime to justify the deployment of National Guard resources and to advance lawless policing. But the truth is that crime in D.C. has reached historic lows. This distortion is taken directly from the authoritarian playbook and is intended to create fear of crime to justify police violence and expanded police enforcement. It reflects the Trump administration’s dehumanization of people it considers enemies or undesirable, such as unhoused people, and its concerted desire to use police to forcefully remove these people from the public eye.
“The show of force through the deployment of National Guard units and the takeover of D.C. Metro Police is an affront to safety that will instead embolden law enforcement officers to operate with unchecked violence. It goes against the will of the residents of D.C. who democratically and lawfully elected a mayor and city council representatives to make decisions regarding safety for their District. The government’s action today threatens individuals who are unhoused and residents in vulnerable, aggressively and disparately policed neighborhoods that will likely be profiled. It also underscores the need for D.C. statehood to empower D.C. residents, who pay taxes and are equal contributors to the U.S. economy as other U.S. residents, to vote for representatives who can protect their interests.
“President Trump desires an America where he and police are above the law. But he and law enforcement officers are bound by the U.S. Constitution and other laws and will be held to account.”
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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
