DC's most crime-affected neighborhoods await Trump crackdown

The Herald Scotland

3 days ago

"He probably doesn't even know where Anacostia is," Charles Wilson, whose neighborhood has one of DC's highest rates of murder and violent crime. Wilson says the low-income area in DC's Ward 8 has endured several shootouts in which bullets struck houses, cars and even lodged in children's bedrooms in recent years.
"I think this is all pomp and circumstance," Wilson says, "to distract people from everything else he is doing."
As part of Trump's Aug. 11 campaign to take "our capital back" from crime and the homeless the federal government has also seized control of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department.
The White House had no immediate response to USA TODAY requests for deployment details, and an MPD spokesman did not return messages seeking comment on Trump's order for the Justice Department to take over the department. .
Some Anacostia residents welcome crime-fighting help from Trump
Like others interviewed in Anacostia by USA TODAY the afternoon and night of Aug. 13, Wilson said he would welcome the presence of more law enforcement - as long as they're trained in community policing and there to help his neighborhood reduce crime and violence.
More: How DC's unique status let Trump take control of police, deploy National Guard
Wilson, 49, has lived in the Southeast DC community for over 20 years. On July 18, 2024, he was awakened at about 2:30 a.m. by what sounded like a war on his hilly suburban street just around the corner from the historic Frederick Douglass estate.
When he obtained a neighbor's doorbell camera footage and posted it online, the video of two men running up and down his street shooting at each other for nearly a minute went viral.
"Hearing it was one thing, but watching it was something else," said Wilson, a longtime community activist and chair of the DC Democratic Party. He said the issue isn't a political one; Democratic and Republican neighbors alike want to see the benefits of what Trump claims is a new campaign to improve the city.
So far, he said, "Nothing's new here. I don't see anything different."
"I don't see anything being done here," said longtime Anacostia resident Tina Harris as she walked along Marion Barry Avenue, named after the former DC mayor.
"I think it's clearly a diversion from the real issues," including Trump's budget cuts for local social services and police, she said.
Trump announced his actions to "to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse," after a high-profile assault on a former staffer of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), 19-year-old Edward Coristine, that occurred in the early morning hours of Aug. 3. during an attempted carjacking.
Mayor Muriel Bowser disputed Trump's justification for declaring a crime emergency, calling it a "so-called emergency" and noting that crime has been trending down after spiking in 2023.
But crime in Ward 8 - including homicide, motor vehicle theft, robbery and assaults with dangerous weapons - have historically been nearly twice that of any other ward of the city.
A few blocks from Wilson's house, a Metropolitan Police Department cruiser sat parked at an intersection with its lights slowly flashing.
The officer inside, like two other officers interviewed by USA TODAY throughout the evening, said he was just making his regular rounds and that he'd seen no uptick in law enforcement or military presence there or in neighboring Ward 7, another high-crime zone. All three officers declined to give their names, saying they weren't authorized to talk publicly.
One of the officers, however, said that as a DC resident, he welcomed the extra resources Trump has authorized, which have also been supported by the police union.
One Anacostia resident, standing outside his home and watching the cruiser, confirmed that the officer was a neighborhood beat cop - and that he's seen no additional MPD officers, federal agents or National Guard troops since Trump made his announcement, despite nightly gunshots, carjackings and other crime. He too declined to give his name, citing a pending background check for a job.
Darrell Gaston, the chef and founder of nearby Kitchen Savages, showed USA TODAY the front windows of his upscale restaurant that he had to replace after they were shattered by a recent gun battle between the occupants of two cars. The wild shootout sent a street light careening into the eatery.
Gaston, a four-term Advisory Neighborhood Commission member, said he'd seen some evidence of an uptick in security, including a few Guard troops and federal agents a block away. What he'd like to see instead, Gaston said, was more DC police officers "who specialize in community engagement and in protecting communities, which hopefully does lead to a decrease in crime."
"Moreover, hopefully it doesn't lead to an increase in the rights of citizens being violated," Gaston said of Trump's surge. "Because when MPD violates your rights, there's a protocol to follow for it to be addressed. If the FBI or the DEA violates your rights, who do you go to?"
Ward 8 has seen an overall decline in violent crime this year, but homicides held steady at 38 compared with the same period in 2024, according to Metropolitan Police Department statistics.
A swarm of federal agents closer to Capitol Hill
Back across the Anacostia river near the Capitol, the rough-and-tumble H Street commercial and nightlife corridor appeared quiet the night of Aug. 13. It was the site of one of the attacks cited by Trump - the 2023 near-fatal stabbing of an aide to Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky "by a demented lunatic as he walked down the street just absolutely for no reason."
The only visible security presence was the occasional MPD cruiser driving by. But shop owners and barflies said the area has been swarmed by federal agents and police late at night since Trump's announcement.
Johnny Lu showed USA TODAY a video he took of a team of seven FBI, ICE and DEA agents patrolling the area late the night of Aug. 12, questioning and even arresting people for drinking and smoking marijuana in public.
Lu welcomed the surge, saying he sees frequent shootings, stabbings, carjackings and robberies outside his Tiki Gardens restaurant.
"MPD is okay, and we have a good relationship with them. But not the feds, especially ICE," Lu said of the corridor's merchants and residents. "We've got to be worried about them."