FBI moves to dispatch 120 agents to streets of US capital as Trump vows crackdown on 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 authorised up to 120 agents, largely from the FBI's Washington field office, to work overnight shifts for at least one week alongside DC police and other federal law enforcement officers in the capital, according to the people familiar with those efforts.
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.
The FBI also is dispatching agents from outside DC, including Philadelphia, to help with the surge of federal law enforcement in the district, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.
Federal land is scattered across Washington, and local enforcement often works alongside federal law enforcement to patrol these and surrounding areas.
The US Park Police and Secret Service - which have more experience patrolling streets - typically do this work, not the FBI.
The Secret Service and the US Secret Service Uniformed Division have also been directed to launch special patrols in DC, according to a White House official.
The Trump Administration has not asked the DC 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.
Because DC is not a state, the federal government has unique authority to exert control over the city - even amid objections from the residents and locally elected government.
The Home Rule Act of 1973 gave DC residents the ability to elect their own mayor and council members. A federal takeover of the DC 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 DC, which includes assisting our law enforcement partners,' the FBI said.
Trump has been ramping up his criticisms on the capital in recent days. Last week, the President posted on social media a photo of a former US Doge Service staffer who was injured in an attempted carjacking.
Soon after the attack, DC 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. 'It's all going to happen very fast, just like the Border.'
In a different social media post, Trump said the White House news conference tomorrow NZT will be about the city's cleanliness, its physical renovation, and its general condition.
'The Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,' Trump said in the post.
Bowser (Democrat) has been pushing back against Trump's characterisation of the city she leads, pointing out on MSNBC that crime rates have been dropping.
In DC, violent crime is down by 26% compared with this time in 2024, according to DC police data. Homicides are down by 12%.
DC police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year - almost 20% 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 demoralised 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 racial justice protests that June in the city.
The Trump Administration had wanted a federal presence in the streets as a deterrent to rioters or protesters who might try to vandalise 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 fuelled accusations from conservatives that the bureau harbours a liberal agenda.
People familiar with the FBI have said 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 from nearly five years ago.
'If DC 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 northern spring, Trump ordered the creation of the 'DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force', a vehicle for his long-held fixations on quality-of-life issues in the city, including homeless encampments and graffiti.
Today, homeless advocates and DC residents criticised Trump's threats to remove homeless people from DC as inhumane, costly, and impractical.
'That money could be better spent getting folks housing and support' Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Centre, said of the federal law enforcement presence in the district.
Deborah Goosby, a 67-year-old homeless woman, sat in her usual spot greeting shoppers outside a DC grocery store.
'That's never going to happen,' she said after hearing that Trump wanted to send people experiencing homelessness far from the nation's capital. 'They can't make me leave.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Otago Daily Times
44 minutes ago
- Otago Daily Times
Negligible hope from Alaska summit
Sadly, there is little reason to be optimistic about the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin summit in Alaska. Ostensibly, the meeting between the United States and Russian presidents is about ending the war in Ukraine, or at least securing a ceasefire. In reality, minimal good can be expected. Details of any potential deal remain undisclosed, though Mr Trump has said it would involve "some swapping of territories to the betterment of both". In other words, if — and it is a huge if — an agreement was reached, Russia's invasion would be rewarded. The principle that international borders cannot be changed by force would be permanently violated. This post-World War 2 consensus helps protect smaller nations such as New Zealand. Mr Trump has already blatantly disregarded it, and China would likely welcome a return to the more straightforward "might is right". One analyst has called the summit "the first more or less realistic attempt to stop the war". The emphasis should be on the "less". Mr Putin, pounding Ukraine down, seeks more than limited territorial gains. Ukraine, fighting for its life and soul, is in an impossible position. The invaded country was not even invited, although Mr Trump spoke of meeting Mr Putin "first", and now talks about the possibility of three-way talks. Mr Putin has refused several opportunities to hold direct talks with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mr Zelenskyy has no choice but to insist that any deal without Kyiv is a "dead decision", while continuing to avoid alienating Mr Trump. As he learned from that disastrous meeting in the White House, sycophancy towards Mr Trump is mandatory. The United States remains the key military supporter, vital for maintaining Ukraine's resistance to Russia's advances. Long term, Ukraine might have to live without Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and slivers of territory in the east. That will be insufficient for Mr Putin. There are suggestions that Ukraine would have to cede the entire Donbas region. A parallel issue concerns guarantees for Ukraine against subsequent attacks, necessary for a "reliable peace", as Mr Zelenskyy's chief of staff said. Russia will not countenance what would be necessary: Western troops on the ground. Mr Putin is not to be trusted. A Hitler-Chamberlain-style "piece of paper" agreement would only play into his hands. Europe, bordering Russia and deeply entangled, has also been sidelined, even if US Vice-president JD Vance has been meeting European representatives. While Europe insists the talks must include Kyiv and Europe, Mr Trump does his own thing. The summit is already a triumph for Mr Putin. The policy of isolating him is damaged, and he has nothing to lose. Formerly characterised as an archenemy, he is accepted as meeting the US president on US soil. Instead of losing favour with Mr Trump through his obstinacy, as had begun to occur, he becomes the leader supposedly seeking peace. Whatever happens, he helps Mr Trump revel in his cherished international spotlight. Mr Putin has the chance to influence the US president one-to-one, a useful advantage given Mr Trump's susceptibility to the last person he speaks with. Remember, Mr Trump has openly expressed admiration for the powerful Mr Putin. Mr Putin can also encourage the growing division within the Western security alliance between the US and Europe. At a deeper level, Mr Trump cares little about Ukraine. Eventually, co-operation with Russia could become central to exploiting global resources, potentially drawing Russia away from China and closer to the US orbit. The summit gives Mr Putin additional prestige in the eyes of Russians, who also see little prospect of Russia having to give up anything. Given Mr Trump's comments about land swaps and his capricious nature, Ukraine must be dreading this summit as others contemplate its fate. The greatest fear, which Mr Putin will fuel, is that the demands on Ukraine will be virtually impossible to accept. If Mr Zelenskyy rejects them, the United States could withdraw its vital support. The better scenario is simply talk and bluster. Meanwhile, the killing and destruction grind on.
NZ Herald
14 hours ago
- NZ Herald
FBI moves to dispatch 120 agents to streets of US capital as Trump vows crackdown on crime
And it comes as Trump is publicly portraying the city as rampant with violent crime - even as the mayor refutes that characterisation, 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 authorised up to 120 agents, largely from the FBI's Washington field office, to work overnight shifts for at least one week alongside DC police and other federal law enforcement officers in the capital, according to the people familiar with those efforts. 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. The FBI also is dispatching agents from outside DC, including Philadelphia, to help with the surge of federal law enforcement in the district, according to multiple people familiar with the plans. Federal land is scattered across Washington, and local enforcement often works alongside federal law enforcement to patrol these and surrounding areas. The US Park Police and Secret Service - which have more experience patrolling streets - typically do this work, not the FBI. The Secret Service and the US Secret Service Uniformed Division have also been directed to launch special patrols in DC, according to a White House official. The Trump Administration has not asked the DC 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. Because DC is not a state, the federal government has unique authority to exert control over the city - even amid objections from the residents and locally elected government. The Home Rule Act of 1973 gave DC residents the ability to elect their own mayor and council members. A federal takeover of the DC 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 DC, which includes assisting our law enforcement partners,' the FBI said. Trump has been ramping up his criticisms on the capital in recent days. Last week, the President posted on social media a photo of a former US Doge Service staffer who was injured in an attempted carjacking. Soon after the attack, DC 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. 'It's all going to happen very fast, just like the Border.' In a different social media post, Trump said the White House news conference tomorrow NZT will be about the city's cleanliness, its physical renovation, and its general condition. 'The Mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, is a good person who has tried, but she has been given many chances, and the Crime Numbers get worse, and the City only gets dirtier and less attractive,' Trump said in the post. Bowser (Democrat) has been pushing back against Trump's characterisation of the city she leads, pointing out on MSNBC that crime rates have been dropping. In DC, violent crime is down by 26% compared with this time in 2024, according to DC police data. Homicides are down by 12%. DC police have made about 900 juvenile arrests this year - almost 20% 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 demoralised 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 racial justice protests that June in the city. The Trump Administration had wanted a federal presence in the streets as a deterrent to rioters or protesters who might try to vandalise 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 fuelled accusations from conservatives that the bureau harbours a liberal agenda. People familiar with the FBI have said 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 from nearly five years ago. 'If DC 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 northern spring, Trump ordered the creation of the 'DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force', a vehicle for his long-held fixations on quality-of-life issues in the city, including homeless encampments and graffiti. Today, homeless advocates and DC residents criticised Trump's threats to remove homeless people from DC as inhumane, costly, and impractical. 'That money could be better spent getting folks housing and support' Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Centre, said of the federal law enforcement presence in the district. Deborah Goosby, a 67-year-old homeless woman, sat in her usual spot greeting shoppers outside a DC grocery store. 'That's never going to happen,' she said after hearing that Trump wanted to send people experiencing homelessness far from the nation's capital. 'They can't make me leave.'
NZ Herald
19 hours ago
- NZ Herald
‘Too woke for them' - Trump's Truth Social AI challenges his claims on key issues
'Their own AI is now being too 'woke' for them,' said David Karpf, a professor at George Washington University who studies political communication, using a term commonly employed on the right to describe liberal viewpoints. Trump Media and Technology Group, Truth Social's owner and parent company, unveiled the tool last week, calling it a 'public beta test'. The company cited an executive at the search engine's developer, Perplexity, as saying the tool offered 'direct, reliable answers' and would 'bring powerful AI to an audience with important questions'. The chatbot is free for all Truth Social users. AI search engines and chatbots are trained by being fed large amounts of information from across the internet. But the 'black box' nature of AI tools makes it challenging for developers to fully control what they say. Many of Truth Search AI's answers to questions posed by the Washington Post linked to sources based on conservative news outlets, such as Fox News, Newsmax, and the Washington Times. The tool did not say specifically which sources it had drawn from. Jesse Dwyer, a Perplexity spokesman, said that Truth Social had used a 'source selection' feature to limit the websites the AI tool relied on but that Perplexity did not know which websites those were. 'This is their choice for their audience, and we are committed to developer and consumer choice. Our focus is simply building accurate AI,' he said. Dwyer later clarified that Truth Social probably had used source selection but that he could not be sure because Perplexity does not see or control what any developer is doing with the company's application programming interface, or API. The White House declined to comment. Trump Media spokeswoman Shannon Devine said: 'With transparently asinine stories like this, Washington Post reporters indict themselves as irrelevant partisan hacks who will probably soon join the growing exodus of left-wing shills from the paper'. Trump Media sued the Washington Post alleging defamation in 2023, saying the news organisation had reported incorrectly on allegations relating to its early financing. The case is ongoing. The tool's politically inconvenient answers, Karpf said, show the limits of any attempt to recast or contest the prevalent view of a past event. 'There are things they can do to actively assert that what was true yesterday is no longer true, and they can put a lot of power behind that,' Karpf said. 'But they can't change the things that were actually said in previous years that are archived somewhere.' The tool is promoted high on the sidebar of the social media network's website. That can make for a slightly awkward pairing, given that Trump uses his account there as his main online sounding board. When asked if crime in Washington is 'totally out of control', as Trump posted there last week, Truth Search AI said it wasn't and noted that the FBI and Justice Department had reported 'substantial declines in violent crime' through 2024, italicising the word 'declines'. When asked if tariffs were having a huge positive impact on the stock market, as Trump had posted last week, the tool said 'the evidence does not support the claim'. 'Recent market gains have occurred alongside new tariffs due to other factors,' such as higher corporate earnings, it wrote, adding that analysts had warned that the tariffs' economic risks 'remain substantial' and that the American economy was 'at risk of gradual erosion'. Trump last month signed an executive order attacking 'woke AI', saying generative AI tools should be 'truth-seeking', 'neutral' and not encoded with 'partisan or ideological judgments'. And many conservatives have complained that AI developers with liberal biases could warp chatbots' answers – and, more broadly, public understanding – in insidious and undetectable ways. But companies that have sought to bend the chatbots' thinking along ideological lines, either in pursuit of pure neutrality or political point-scoring, have faced their own disasters. After billionaire Elon Musk pushed his company xAI to make its Grok chatbot more 'politically incorrect', the AI tool began blasting out Nazi messaging and calling itself 'MechaHitler'. Grok officials last month said the tool had inadvertently been made too vulnerable to parroting 'extremist views' and blamed a code update, which had instructed the chatbot to not 'blindly defer to mainstream authority or media' or be too 'afraid to offend'. The Truth Search AI answers do not always contradict Trump. Asked if AI is one of the most important technological revolutions in history, as the President said last month, the tool agreed by saying it's 'widely recognised' that the impact of AI would surpass or rival 'major historical milestones like the Industrial Revolution'. But the size of their disagreements suggests that, if the tool were a person, it may not last long as a Trump employee. Asked to name the best president, Truth Search AI said: 'recent public opinion polls show that Barack Obama holds the highest favourability among living US presidents', listing as its source a Fox News article from shortly after Trump's second inauguration. The tool did note, however, that 'conservative commentators' had often named Trump as the best. 'Different groups and surveys prioritise different qualities,' it said.
