Washington residents are preparing for a federal takeover of local law enforcement as National Guard troops made their way to the district on Tuesday morning.
The first troops arrived at the D.C. Armory, located roughly 2 miles east of the Capitol building, early in the morning and continued streaming in throughout the day.
President Donald Trump announced the takeover on Monday, saying he would activate hundreds of troops and take over the Metropolitan Police Department to address violent crime.
Trump is also targeting homelessness, with White House officials saying homeless people must accept shelter, mental health, or addiction treatment, or face jail time to clean up the city’s streets, both for locals and for tourists visiting Washington.
It is a lot to take in for a city that voted 90.3% for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in last fall’s election. By contrast, just 6.5% of Washington voters, 21,076 people in a city of over 700,000, pulled the lever for Trump.
However, the District of Columbia remains a federally controlled entity. Trump is likely on solid legal ground to make the move thanks to the power granted to him by 77 million voters in other parts of the country.
As the troops arrived Tuesday, residents who spoke to the Washington Examiner shared a variety of reactions ranging from support for the president’s actions to horror at the prospect of being sent to a concentration camp.
Melanie Splendora, who has lived in the district since 2011, was glad to hear it.
“I feel safer. It’s terrible here,” Splendora said during an interview near her residence on Thomas Circle, just two blocks from the scene of a fatal shooting that took place Monday night.
Splendora added that she had witnessed groups of teenagers stealing from a nearby CVS more than once, though she said she herself was not targeted.
“Security doesn’t do anything because they’re in a big group, and then they go cursing and being rude to the people in the stores,” she said. “They think they can do whatever they want because they feel like they’re in control of the situation, and they just run off. No one is going to say something.”
Splendora no longer goes out at night out of fear, and cited comments from Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledging that more law enforcement presence in local neighborhoods may be positive in fighting crime.
But Splendora is likely in the minority of local opinion.
Shashank Bharadwaj, who also lives near Thomas Circle, said he does not feel the takeover is needed.
“I’m worried about it encroaching on D.C.,” Bharadwaj said while walking his dog. “There’s no reason for their presence. Crime rates are down, so I don’t see any good reason to justify it.”
Bharadwaj said he hopes the deployment is as short as possible and that he feels safe walking city streets. He pointed to a different set of remarks from Bowser, in which she said Trump’s order was unsettling and unprecedented.
“That’s the problem with D.C., right?” said Bharadwaj, who has lived in Washington since 2022. “We don’t really have representation at the federal level, so there’s only so much [the D.C. Council] can do. It seems like Trump is allowed to just nationalize or federalize the city and take over the police department.”
A third local, Axol Campo, also opposed the move, though in far stronger terms.
“I’m a nonbinary person that is a D.C. resident,” Campo said. “I also have a last name that’s not traditionally white, so if I get stopped in the wrong area, I could get sent off to a concentration camp or sent to another country or disappeared.”
Campo, who lives in the northern part of the city, described the deployment as a “complete fascist overreach” and was concerned because, “I don’t know where these Gestapo are going to pop up.”
For Campo, who has lived in Washington for 10 years, a lack of police on the streets beats the threat of a militarized force, and the plans to remove homeless people from the streets are also a concern.
“I feel safe when there are unhoused people, because where the f*** are they going to go?” Campo said. As for Bowser, Campo wishes she would be much more aggressive in her interactions with the president and Washington’s police force.
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“Stand the f*** up,” Campo said. “She, for years, has been offering bigger bonuses to police, while choosing not to fund things that would actually support the community.”
Campo declined to be photographed, citing safety concerns.
