As Violent Crime Soars in Wash., D.C , Trump Vows 'Federal Takeover'; Recent Shooting
Forget statehood - Wash., D.C., leaders are worried 'we could lose most of the control we have over the city now.' NBC, Feb. 4, 2024. Ed.
Donald Trump has never been a fan of Washington, D.C., and the feeling is mutual among most of its residents, who broke into spontaneous street celebrations when he lost the White House. But the former president’s animosity has only grown since he left the city and as violent crime has continued to climb in the capital, while falling from pandemic-era highs in other cities, leading Trump to campaign on a “federal takeover of this filthy and crime-ridden embarrassment to our nation.”
Trump repeatedly promised to essentially occupy the capital with federal troops, a tactic he flirted with during the height of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, telling a conservative audience last year, “I will send in the National Guard until law and order is restored” and that he “wouldn’t even call the mayor.” Washington has legitimately become a national outlier on violent crime, making 2023 the city’s deadliest in more than 2 decades, even as violent crime dropped in nearly every other city in America.
Baltimore, for instance, infamous for its crime and blight portrayed in “The Wire,” saw its biggest drop in homicides last year. In D.C., though, shootings, homicides and carjackings all soared, spilling into neighborhoods that have typically been spared that kind of violence, including the downtown area occupied by office workers, and making many residents feel unsafe for the first time. Reports are piling up of residents shot in DuPont Circle, in a Metro station, outside Nationals Park, and walking home from work.
On Monday, a former Trump administration official was shot seemingly at random while waiting to pick up his wife on K St., home to many of the city’s law and lobbying firms. Trump, Republicans in Congress and allies in the conservative media have used Washington - where Democrats typically receive about 90% of the vote for president - to portray the entire Democratic Party as soft on crime ahead of the Nov. election and argue it needs more federal oversight. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s advocate on Capitol Hill, said the city needs more autonomy, not less, to tackle crime...
CORRECTION (Feb. 4, 2024): A previous version of this story misspelled the name of an expert and misidentified the think tank where he works. He is Charles “Cully” Stimson of the Heritage Foundation, not Charles Stimpson of the Heritage Institute...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/violent-crime-soars-washington-dc-trump-vows-federal-takeover-rcna136936
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