D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced the city has sued President Donald Trump’s administration after taking over the police.
“The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful,” Schwalb said in a statement. “They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD. They infringe on the District’s right to self-governance and put the safety of DC residents and visitors at risk.”
The lawsuit cites the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, enacted by Congress in 1973.
“By contrast, Congress gave the President an exceedingly narrow role in the governance of the District,” according to the filing. “In Section 740 of the Home Rule Act, Congress provided that if the President ‘determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist,’ the President may require that the Mayor ‘provide such services’ of the Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) as the President deems necessary for ‘federal purposes.’”
Here’s more:
The President’s authority under Section 740 is sharply limited in time: it must terminate within 48 hours unless the President sends proper notice to Congress, and, in all events, it must terminate upon the expiration of the emergency or within 30 days, whichever comes first. Id. § 1-207.40(a)-(b). For the President to obtain MPD’s services for longer than 30 days—even in the face of an ongoing emergency—Congress must pass a joint resolution permitting the extension. Id. § 1-207.40(d).Moreover, by its terms, Section 740 only permits the President to require the Mayor to “provide services” of MPD for “federal purposes.” Id. § 1-207.40(a). It does not permit the President to seize control of MPD. Nor does it authorize the President to direct MPD in the policing of local crime. Congress left that responsibility to local leaders. Id.
Schwalb claims Trump violated Section 740 when he put the police department “under direct federal control” and gave Attorney General Pam Bondi command of it.
Everyone keeps fighting over the crime stats in D.C.
One study analyzed violent crime trends in D.C. From Fox News:
“You have less chance of being victimized, but if you are victimized, you have more of a chance of dying,” John Jay adjunct lecturer Jillian Snider, a retired New York Police Department officer, told Fox News Digital Tuesday of violent crime trends in the nation’s capital.Snider was referring to a report published by the Council on Criminal Justice in July, which studied violent crime data of 17 large U.S. cities between 2018 and 2024, specifically diving into the lethality of violent crimes in those cities. It found Washington, D.C., had the highest lethality level out of the group – which included cities such as Baltimore and Chicago – at a 38% increase in lethality in 2024 compared with 2018.Lethality in D.C. jumped by a whopping 341% when compared to 2012 data, the study found, reporting that there were 13 homicides per 1,000 serious violent crimes in 2012 to 57 homicides per 1,000 serious violent crimes in 2024.The study defined lethality as “the number of homicides per aggravated assaults and robberies.”
On January 3, 2025, the DOJ claimed violent crime in D.C. hit a 30-year low. Notice the date. That’s under former President Joe Biden.
Also, the media didn’t report that the day of Trump’s announcement, the city settled with a former police sergeant who accused her superiors of altering crime statistics to make them appear lower.
I remember reading a study about Chicago crime a few years ago that said crime went down but violent crime increased.
Either way, just like with jobs and CPI reports, people can cherry pick the stats to extract the ones for their narrative.
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