President Donald Trump said Monday he plans to take over the nation’s capital police force and activate 800 members of the National Guard to combat crime in Washington D.C., and said he may replicate that model in other cities.
But the president has a unique privilege in Washington that doesn’t apply to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, creating a roadblock to federal law enforcement takeovers outside the capital city.
Trump cited what he said were alarming crime statistics, describing D.C. as a hotbed for crime with a higher rate of homicide than Islamabad, Pakistan, saying he was going to “take our capital back” from criminals and squalor.
The crime statistics he cited didn’t come from the administration’s own books. The FBI released statistics on crime across the U.S. last week showing that violent crime are down everywhere, including in the cities the president has highlighted as dangerous.
Trump’s plan to take over the D.C. police force is limited by the D.C. Home Rule Act, which allows the president to do so for just 30 days, for federal purposes in an emergency, Anthony Kreiss, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday.
And the home rule act doesn’t extend to Atlanta or any other U.S. cities, Kreiss noted, limiting Trump’s ability to expand his power here.
“Constitutionally speaking, he cannot do in Atlanta or in any other city what he’s doing in D.C.,” Kreiss said, adding the federal government cannot commandeer local and state officials to do whatever the president wants.
“The federal government has no role in policing America’s streets,” Kreiss said.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Trump has previously criticized Atlanta for its crime rates, calling it “a killing field” last year during a campaign rally. This year, Atlanta has seen a drop in homicides that has outpaced the rest of the country.
As of July, homicides were down 25% from 2024 and crime overall is down 8% from 2024.
The Atlanta Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
, Sen. Jon Ossoff spoke about Trump’s plan to deploy National Guard members in D.C., calling it a violation of “some of the most fundamental and sacred principles embedded in our constitution.”
“People don’t join the United States Armed Forces to police American cities,” Ossoff said. “That should only ever be an absolute last resort.”
Eric Segall, a professor at Georgia State’s College of Law, said there appears to be a deliberate attempt by the administration to make everything an emergency, which can give the federal government powers that they would not normally have.
“This president is centralizing power in the executive branch, by using, for example, the military domestically, when there’s no emergency going on, at least in my opinion, in ways that are categorically different,” Segall said.
It’s not the first time Trump has deployed National Guard troops to a major American city, after around 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active duty Marines were sent to Los Angeles in late June in response to immigration protests.
A trial was set to start Monday over whether or not the Trump administration violated federal law after deploying troops to Los Angeles. Segall doesn’t think the court’s ruling or any other ruling will change much of the way the Trump administration handles immigration and crime issues.
Kreiss said the government can’t just federalize the National Guard and have them do civilian enforcement, barring any actual attempt to “overthrow the government and create anarchy and chaos in a way that endangers everybody.”
“Barring that the president can’t just take over local law enforcement through the federalizing of the National Guard. That would just be a total abuse of the law,” Kreiss said.
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