The Department of Justice (DOJ) will work closely with the D.C. Police to make the U.S. capital safe again, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Tuesday following her meeting with Democrat D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Referring to the meeting as “productive,” Bondi said both she and Bowser agreed that there is “nothing more important than keeping residents and tourists in Washington, D.C. safe from deadly crime.”
“At President Trump’s direction, @TheJusticeDept will work closely with D.C. city government and @DCPoliceDept to make Washington, D.C. safe again,” Bondi made clear.
The meeting followed President Donald Trump’s major announcement on Monday, which he referred to as “liberation day.” During the highly-anticipated press conference, Trump announced he is invoking section 740 of the district of Columbia Home Rule Act, placing the DC Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and activating the National Guard to crack down on rampant crime in the nation’s capital.
“The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years, and the number of carjackings has more than tripled. Murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever. They say 25 years, but they don’t know what that means, because it just goes back 25 years,” Trump said during the press conference.
“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people, and we’re not going to let it happen anymore,” Trump he said, adding, “We’re not going to take it, just like we did on our southern border.”
Democrat Mayor Bowser held a press conference just hours later, describing Trump’s plan to address crime in the city as “unsettling and unprecedented.”
She said in part:
I’ve said before, and I’ll repeat that I believe that the President’s view of D.C. 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.
Despite her denial, Bowser reportedly has no plan to issue a legal challenge against Trump’s order for federal law enforcement to take over D.C., as their lawyers do not believe they have the legal standing to do so — something confirmed with Bondi’s Tuesday statement essentially confirming cooperation.
