FBI dispatches agents to D.C. streets as Trump vows crackdown on crime

Washington Post

8 hours ago

The FBI has taken the unusual step of dispatching as many as 120 of its agents to help local law enforcement prevent carjackings and violent crime in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter, as President Donald Trump threatens a federal takeover of the nation's capital.
Trump, who plans a news conference at the White House on Monday on this topic, compared the forthcoming action against D.C. crime to his administration's aggressive crackdown against illegal immigration at the southern border, saying on Sunday that he plans to 'immediately clear out the city's homeless population and take swift action against crime.'
'Be prepared! There will be no 'MR. NICE GUY.' We want our Capital BACK,' Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social social media platform.
The deployment of FBI agents to deal with local crime puts the agency's counterintelligence, public corruption and other personnel with minimal training in traffic stops out on the streets in potentially dangerous encounters, diverting them from their typical jobs at the bureau. And it comes as Trump is publicly portraying the city as rampant with violent crime — even as the mayor refutes that characterization, pointing to police data showing a drop in violent crime.
Last week, Trump ordered federal law enforcement agents from several agencies to be deployed on city streets and called for more juveniles to be charged in the adult justice system.
Staffing assignments this weekend reveal for the first time how many new FBI resources the Trump administration could divert to local crime and the frustration it has caused within the bureau.
In recent days, the administration has authorized up to 120 agents, largely from the FBI's Washington Field Office, to work overnight shifts for at least one week alongside D.C. police and other federal law enforcement officers in the nation's capital, according to the people familiar with those efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss specifics of a staffing plan that has not been made public. FBI agents generally do not have authority to make traffic stops, and the people said the agents' roles could include supporting the other agencies during traffic stops.
Federal land is scattered across Washington, and local enforcement often works alongside federal law enforcement to patrol these areas. But the U.S. Park Police and Secret Service — which have more experience patrolling streets — typically do this work, not the FBI.
The Secret Service and the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division have also been directed to launch special patrols in D.C., according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation.
The Trump administration has not asked the D.C. police department — the chief law enforcement agency responsible for policing local crime — on how best to deploy these federal resources, according to a senior official with the department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.
Because D.C. is not a state, the federal government has unique authority to exert control over the city — even amid objections from the locally elected government and residents. The Home Rule Act of 1973 gave D.C. residents the ability to elect their own mayor and council members. A federal take over of the D.C. police force would be an extraordinary assertion of power in a place where local leaders have few avenues to resist federal encroachment.
'Agents from the FBI Washington Field Office continue to participate in the increased federal law enforcement presence in D.C., which includes assisting our law enforcement partners,' the FBI said in a statement Sunday morning.
Trump has been ramping up his attacks on the nation's capital in recent days. Last week, the president posted on social media a photo of a former U.S. DOGE Service staffer who was injured in an attempted carjacking. Soon after the attack, D.C. police arrested a 15-year-old boy and girl from Maryland and charged them with unarmed carjacking.
'I'm going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before,' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Sunday morning. 'It's all going to happen very fast, just like the Border.'
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has been pushing back against Trump's characterization of the city she leads, pointing out on MSNBC on Sunday morning that crime rates have been dropping in the nation's capital.
In D.C., violent crime is down 26 percent compared with this time in 2024, according to D.C. police data. Homicides are down 12 percent.
D.C. police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year — almost 20 percent fewer than during the same time frame last year. About 200 of those charges are for violent crimes and at least four dozen are for carjacking.
'If the priority is to show force in an American city, we know he can do that here,' Bowser, who said she last spoke to Trump a few weeks ago, said on MSNBC. 'But it won't be because there's a spike in crime.'
The reassignment of FBI agents has further demoralized some agents in the Washington Field Office, who believe they have little expertise or training in thwarting carjackers and were already angered by a spate of firings inside the agency that they deemed were unwarranted. Last week, the Trump administration ousted with no explanation FBI personnel across the country, including the head of the Washington Field Office.
In 2020, the first Trump administration dispatched FBI agents, mostly from the Washington Field Office, to respond to the June 2020 racial justice protests in the nation's capital. The Trump administration had wanted a federal presence in the streets as a deterrent to rioters or protesters who might try to vandalize federal property.
Several agents were captured in a photograph taking a knee in what was viewed as a gesture of solidarity to protesters marching against racial injustice — an image that went viral and fueled accusations from conservatives that the bureau harbors a liberal agenda. But people familiar with the FBI have said that agents are not trained for riot control and were placed in an untenable position as they knelt down, trying to defuse a tense situation.
In the first months of the current Trump administration, officials reassigned several of those agents who were captured in that photo nearly five years ago.
'If D.C. doesn't get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they're not going to get away with it anymore,' Trump wrote on social media last week in a post that included a bloody image of the injured former DOGE staffer.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Natalie Allison contributed to this report.