DC Mayor Muriel Bowser says Trump's takeover is 'unsettling and unprecedented'

Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has said that Trump’s recent actions to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital, including by placing the city’s police under federal control, are "unsettling and unprecedented."

Bowser said during her Monday speech that she believes Trump’s view of DC "is shaped by his Covid-era experience during his first term. And it is true that those were more challenging times related to some issues. It is also true that we experienced a crime spike post-Covid, but we work quickly to put laws in place and tactics that got violent offenders off our streets and gave our police officers more tools, which is why we have seen a huge decrease in crime."

She said that crime is down from the high seen in 2023, but also "down from 2019 before the pandemic, and we’re at a 30-year violent crime low." The police union in DC has accused a commander, who was placed on leave in the spring, of falsifying crime data by manipulating it to make it seem as though violent crime has fallen considerably. 

Bowser said that while Trump has the authority under the DC Home Rule Charter to "require the mayor, to require me to supply services of the Metropolitan Police Department, and he also has control and the ability to deploy the National Guard."

"But let me be clear, as our Home Rule Charter is also clear and the president’s executive order restates. Chief Pamela Smith is the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department and its 3,100 members work un der her direction. The Home Rule charter requires the mayor to provide the services of MPD during special conditions of an emergency, and we will follow the law, though there's a question about the subjectivity of that declaration."

She used the speech to advocate for DC statehood, an idea that Trump shot down on Wednesday, and said, "while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that, given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we're totally surprised."