Trump’s DC occupation scratches an old itch

In 1989, Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in four New York newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for the return of the death penalty after a white jogger was brutally attacked in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teens were arrested for the assault, and after confessions later determined to have been coerced by the police, they were convicted — even though there was no physical evidence linking any of them to the crime.

After the five young men had spent years in prison for a crime they did not commit, their convictions were vacated in 2002 when DNA evidence implicated Matías Reyes, a serial rapist. (In 2022, a sixth teenager who was convicted on a related charge was also exonerated.) Reyes ultimately confessed and provided an accounting of the crime that matched details prosecutors already knew about the case; forensics confirmed he had acted alone.

After the case was finally solved, it became symbolic for systemic injustice, police brutality and racial profiling. Trump never apologized to the five men, and he has never acknowledged what would have happened to them had his death penalty campaign succeeded. In October 2024, they filed suit against Trump for allegedly defaming them in his presidential debate against then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and in late June, a federal judge rejected the president’s efforts to have the case dismissed.

Trump’s vitriol has percolated in the intervening decades since his campaign against Central Park Five. After his full-page ads claimed that “roving bands of wild criminals” were controlling New York City streets in 1989, this week he claimed that “roving mobs of wild youth” are terrorizing the streets of Washington, D.C.

Trump once again used inaccurate claims to portray a city overwhelmed with soaring violence when he announced on Monday that he was deploying 800 members of the D.C. National Guard and taking over the Metropolitan Police Department to rein in “complete and total lawlessness.” His misleading charts, which featured selectively outdated crime statistics, were so patently wrong that he was fact-checked live by CNN, MSNBC, PBS, NPR and the BBC. Even the Justice Department’s data shows that violent crime in Washington is at a 30-year low.

On Thursday night, he followed up his actions by having U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi name Terrance C. Cole, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as “emergency police commissioner.” Hours later, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit against the administration for its “unlawful actions” in violating the Home Rule Act of 1973, which granted the city partial autonomy. On Saturday night, it was reported that three Republican-led states — West Virginia, Ohio and South Carolina — would be sending 750 National Guard members to Washington. Some of the troops will now be carrying firearms.

The president’s addiction to hate and division, promoted through blatant and unabashed falsehoods, has persisted since the days of the attack in Central Park. When then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch called for public healing, seeking to unite rather than divide the city, Trump refused to have it. His ad shot back: “Maybe hate is what we need…I want to hate these muggers and murderers…They should be forced to suffer…Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will.”

At least on this front, Trump has been true to his word. He has continued ratcheting up false portrayals of dystopian urban hellscapes riddled with crime, even as experts track the link between his language, trickle-down racism and an increase in hate crimes.

The infamous death penalty ads also revealed his thirst for police brutality. He argued in them that police should be “unshackled” from the constant threat of being called to account for “police brutality,” a sentiment he has echoed ever since. In a 2017 speech, Trump said police should not have to be “nice” to suspects and encouraged arresting officers to not shield suspects’ heads as they were loaded into squad cars. Three years later, he appeared to celebrate the killing of Michael Reinoehl, a community activist who was suspected of fatally shooting a member of a pro-Trump group at a protest in Portland, Ore. That same year, in response to protests over police brutality in the George Floyd case, he reportedly asked his staff if the protestors couldn’t “just be shot. In 2023, during a speech to California Republicans, he called for police to respond to shoplifters by shooting them. At a campaign rally in 2024, Trump said that one day of “violent policing” would end crime, suggesting that if police were free to brutalize the population, crime would disappear. In April, he issued an executive order that promoted aggressive police tactics and made it more difficult to punish brutality.

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On Monday, as he detailed his “federal takeover” of Washington, the president said that police and military forces could “do whatever the hell they want” to people on the streets, expressly encouraging violent force.

The obvious problem with getting “tougher” on crime without addressing community needs is that it doesn’t work — and it often leads to an increase in crime. Trump’s ineptitude also undermines police accountability efforts, further eroding trust between police and communities. By encouraging law enforcement to use excessive force, he spreads distrust of the police among the public, needlessly endangering the lives of both citizens and police.

It is widely assumed that Trump is using D.C. as a test run for the federal occupation of other Democratic-led cities. During the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, when Trump still had adults in the room to advise him, he voiced interest in taking over Washington, but officials warned that such a heavy-handed approach could backfire. Now, in the absence of more competent advisors, the president is indulging his most dangerous authoritarian impulses.

The Pentagon is also developing a National Guard “reaction force” to confront and quell protests, demonstrations and civil unrest. The plan calls for troops to be on constant standby for rapid deployment and looks to be targeted to Democratic-run cities.

Setting aside the glaring unconstitutionality of his plan, military service members aren’t trained to de-escalate tensions, manage crowds or solve crimes. They are trained to kill. That is why the Posse Comitatus Act forbids using military forces against civilian populations, except in cases of insurrection.

The purpose of Trump’s actions in Washington isn’t to address escalating crime — because the city’s crime isn’t escalating. And it isn’t to deal with potholes, beautification or anything else Trump mentioned in his incoherent press conference.

Just like he did in Los Angeles, the president is “taking over” D.C. to normalize an expanded police state for an extended period of time — and to take his 1989 declaration of hate, control and brutality nationwide.