Dirt bikes, ATVs driven around World War II memorial in Washington, DC: video
Video posted on X showed at least three people driving around the outdoor memorial late Saturday night.
The United States Park Police is aware of the video, according to Fox 5 Dc.
Nyc Vandals Who Defaced Wwi Statue, Burned American Flag Should 'Learn Their History,' Veterans Group Says
"We are currently reviewing security footage to identify potential suspects. The National Park Service strongly condemns activities like the ones seen in the video that disrespect the solemnity of the National Mall's memorials," said National Park Service's Mike Litterst.
Veteran David Fields told FOX 5 that the acts seen in the video were "disgraceful."
Read On The Fox News App
Portland Memorial Dedicated To City's Fallen Police Officers Vandalized: 'Startling And Ugly'
"This is just as sacred as Arlington National Cemetery. And to have people riding motorcycles around there, was just a lack of respect," Fields said.
Laws in D.C. prohibit the use of ATVs on public streets and in the National Mall area, but the Metropolitan Police Department said officers won't pursue the vehicles because of the department's chase policy.
Earlier this month in the nation's capital, two Metro police officers were hit by an ATV rider in northeast D.C. That driver fled the scene.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the National Park Service for comment.Original article source: Dirt bikes, ATVs driven around World War II memorial in Washington, DC: video

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘Hyperbolic and false': Trump's portrayal of crime in Washington DC has little to do with facts
Donald Trump is deploying the national guard in Washington DC and seizing control of its police force, claiming that the nation's capital has become 'lawless' and is 'one of the most dangerous cities anywhere in the world'. The president portrayed himself as DC's savior, vowing to rid it of 'crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor and worse'. He demanded unhoused people leave the city, or face eviction. Trump's portrayal of Washington DC, where he has been forced to reside as president, cutting short his time in his beloved Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, did not come as a surprise. He's presented DC as a 'nightmare of murder and crime' before, and already in February was reported to be mulling a law-enforcement crackdown. Nor is it the only major American city in his crosshairs. 'Los Angeles has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations,' Trump said in June, while deploying the national guard to quell protests there. Just as Los Angeles in June wasn't overrun with insurrectionist mobs – the protests were largely confined to a few city blocks – Trump's portrayal of crime in Washington DC has little to do with facts, but instead, are rooted in false and misleading claims about crime and homelessness, experts say. Muriel Bowser, the Democratic mayor of DC, responded, saying: 'Any comparison to a war-torn country is hyperbolic and false.' Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low In his announcement on Monday, Trump focused on DC's 2023 crime rates, saying murders that year 'reached the highest rate probably ever'. Washington DC did experience a sharp increase in homicides in 2023, with 274 killings, a jump from the 203 lives lost the year prior. It was a devastating toll for communities in the city, many of which struggled to emerge from the pandemic. Related: 'Red meat to throw to his base': DC residents on Trump's police takeover But crime trends have dramatically changed since. In January, the Metropolitan police department and US attorney's office released a report indicating that total violent crime in DC in 2024 was down 35% from the prior year, marking the lowest rate in over 30 years. The overall violent crime reduction included a 32% decline in homicides, a 39% decline in robberies, a 53% decline in armed carjackings and a 27% decline in assaults with a dangerous weapon, compared to 2023. The progress, US attorney Matthew Graves said at the time, was based on a strategy that focused on specific groups and drug trafficking networks targeting certain neighborhoods. 'Overall, there's an unmistakable and large drop in violence [in DC] since the summer of 2023, when there were peaks in homicide, gun assaults, robbery, and carjacking,' Adam Gelb, the president of the Council on Criminal Justice, a non-partisan thinktank, said in a statement. The group has reported that DC's homicide rate fell 19% in January through June of this year compared to the same period last year. Youth arrests have declined in DC Trump began discussing a return to federal control of the city and the use of national guard to quell street crime after a former Doge staffer, Edward Coristine, appeared to have been attacked by a group of young people last week near his car. In statements on Monday, the president put forward a dramatic portrayal of offenses committed by minors in the capital, saying: 'Caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day. They're on ATVs, motorbikes. They travel pretty well.' At the same time, he indicated he wants law enforcement to take a more aggressive response. 'They fight back, until you knock the hell out of them. Because it's the only language they understand,' he said. DC police have made roughly 900 arrests of youth this year, nearly 20% fewer than the same timeframe last year, according to the Washington Post. About 200 of those are arrests were for alleged violent crimes, with more than 40 for carjacking. Insha Rahman, the vice-president of advocacy and partnerships at Vera Institute of Justice, a non-profit that supports reforms, noted that data shows DC has had success in reducing youth violence through community-based programs instead of expanding police operations or enacting harsher punishments. She cited a restorative justice diversion program that allows youth to avoid prosecution and make amends outside the legal system and a program focused on mediating disputes. 'DC's most promising reductions in youth violence have come from community-led, accountability-driven interventions – not punitive crackdowns,' she said in an email. Unhoused people are victimized at high rates Trump's recent push to crack down on homelessness through an executive order linked unhoused people to crime, saying: 'Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.' Data, however, has consistently shown that unhoused people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime. In one of the largest studies of homelessness in decades, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) surveyed thousands of unhoused people in 2021 and 2022 and found that 36% of all participants reported experiencing physical violence during their current homelessness episode. Of those, half reported that the violence was committed by a stranger. 'People experiencing homelessness are at an extraordinarily high risk of being a victim of crime, often committed by people who are housed and people who are total strangers to them,' said Dr Margot Kushel, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative. With unhoused people increasingly criminalized and targeted for sweeps, she added: 'That victimization happens in the shadows. They don't feel they can approach the police and report violence.' Meanwhile, the latest available data shows that while cities across the US have been grappling with surges in homelessness since the pandemic, the Washington DC region reported a slight decrease in its unhoused population this year. The 2025 annual survey, a rough estimate from a single day, recorded 9,659 people experiencing homelessness in the region, a decrease of 115 people from the year prior, marking a 1% drop. The survey, conducted in January of this year, recorded a 10% decrease in unsheltered single adults, meaning people living outside. That marked the first year-over-year decline after several years of increases. Trump's falsehoods about other cities Before Trump federalized law enforcement in Washington DC, the president focused on Los Angeles, deploying thousands of national guard members and marines to the city to quell protests against his administration's immigration politics. Then, too, Trump sought to portray the city as one in chaos. He claimed on social media that 'mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents'. His FBI director, Kash Patel, said LA was 'under siege by marauding criminals'. The image was sharply contradicted by what was happening on the ground. The sustained protests were largely confined to a 10-block area of downtown LA, and while there were violent incidents, the protests were largely considered peaceful. Police made hundreds of arrests, but many were for minor, nonviolent offenses, such as failure to disperse. The Department of Homeland Security and the Trump-appointed US attorney for the LA region have repeatedly accused protesters and others of violence against immigration officers, but have seen some of their claims contradicted by video footage. The Department of Justice has been forced to dismiss several felony assault charges it filed against demonstrators and people accused of interfering with immigration agents. Trump suggested on Monday that Los Angeles could see further intervention, again suggesting crime was rampant in those municipalities. So could Baltimore and Chicago, the president said. But those cities have also seen drops in crime similar to the trends in DC. Baltimore officials last month said the city was seeing the lowest number of homicides year-to-date in five decades. Related: Trump seizes control of Washington DC police and deploys national guard LA mayor Karen Bass said last month that the city was experiencing a roughly 20% dip in homicides in the first half of the year and was on pace for its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years. 'Trump is wrong that 'crime is out of control in DC' and other cities,' Rahman said. 'The cities that Trump cited at his press conference – Chicago, Baltimore, and Los Angeles – have all experienced unprecedented crime declines since 2023, before Trump took office.' Thomas Abt, the founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction at the University of Maryland, questioned Trump's decision to have Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, and Terry Cole, the Drug Enforcement Administration administrator, take over the DC police: 'If violent crime has been dropping for 18 months, it's unclear to me how those two people – neither who have local law enforcement experience – can improve upon the good job that local law enforcement is doing.' Pulling FBI and other federal agents away from their jobs to patrol DC also means fewer resources dedicated to serious crime, he added: 'It's not clear this will make DC any safer, and could potentially make the rest of the country less safe.'


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
States battle Trump over $1b in victim aid tied to immigration
Advertisement 'In this case American victims are attempting to pick up the pieces of their lives, bury their family members, and see to it that criminals responsible for hurting them and their loved ones are held accountable,' said Neronha. Get Rhode Island News Alerts Sign up to get breaking news and interesting stories from Rhode Island in your inbox each weekday. Enter Email Sign Up Including Monday's suit, Neronha's office has The Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA, was enacted in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, and created a series of grant programs to enable states to provide critical resources and services to victims and Related : Advertisement Congress has required the distribution of nearly all VOCA funding to states based on fixed statutory formulas, but funds have declined steadily since 2018 under both Trump and former President Joe Biden. In 2021, Biden signed a bill into law to Money for the fund is raised through fines and penalties collected from federal criminal cases that have to do with white-collar crimes, corporate fraud, and other offenses. Funds do not come from American taxpayers. The funding streams for VOCA total more than $1 billion per year nationwide. States use these funds to assist nearly 9 million crime victims per year, and to provide compensation for more than 200,000 victims' claims per year. Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha's office has taken legal action against the Trump administration 33 times. Lane Turner/Globe Staff In 2024, Rhode Island alone received nearly $3 million in VOCA victim assistance funds, and close to $300,000 in victim compensation funds. During that same year, VOCA assistance funds were used to provide services to approximately 41,015 individuals through dozens of nonprofits, and 635 individuals received VOCA compensation payments through the State's Crime Victim Compensation Program. Trump's Department of Justice has declared that these funds will be blocked from states, along with the victims and survivors they serve, unless states comply with the administration's immigration enforcement priorities. To receive these funds, states must assist the US Department of Homeland Security with civil immigration enforcement efforts, which is a responsibility of the federal government. Advertisement 'Rhode Island consistently cooperates with all federal law enforcement agencies, as required by federal law,' said Neronha. 'What we won't, and can't do legally, is divert important state law enforcement resources to do the federal government's civil immigration law bidding.' The suit comes less than a week after US Attorney General Related : Speaking about Monday's lawsuit, Neronha said this latest directive from the Trump administration to states conflicts with core principles of American governance, the Constitution's separation of powers, and federalism. Plus, Congress did not authorize the Justice Department to impose conditions on these grant programs, he said. 'In this country, above all else, we expect our government to protect us, and this latest move flies in the face of that expectation,' said Neronha. 'We can and must support crime victims, and support must not be illegally tethered to federal policies. 'We are on the right side of the law here, and we will prevail,' Neronha said. Alexa Gagosz can be reached at


CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
5 things to know for August 18: Ukraine, Israel-Hamas war, DC, Hurricane Erin, Pollution
Remember this name: Bodhana Sivanandan. The 10-year-old British girl recently made history in the Game of Kings. Here's what else you need to know to get up to speed and on with your day. Prior to last week's historic summit in Alaska, President Donald Trump said he would be disappointed if a ceasefire wasn't reached between Russia and Ukraine, and even threatened 'severe' consequences on Moscow if Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't end the fighting. However, Trump returned from the summit with different priorities. He is now focused on securing a peace deal without a ceasefire and said 'we don't have to think' about sanctions against Russia. Trump will host a summit at the White House today with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and several European leaders to discuss his talks with Putin in more detail. But on his social media site, Trump appeared to preview the message he'll deliver to his visitors: If Zelensky wants the war in Ukraine to end, he must agree to some of Russia's conditions, including that Ukraine cede Crimea and agree never to join NATO. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis gathered around Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Sunday to demand an end to the war in Gaza and the return of the remaining 50 hostages. Many protesters also participated in a nationwide general strike, blocked major roads and staged rallies in cities across Israel. These events were led by family members of the hostages and the October Council, which represents bereaved families from the war. It was one of the largest coordinated demonstrations since the beginning of the Gaza war nearly two years ago. 'We are united in one simple demand directed at the Israeli government: Put an Israeli proposal on the table today for a comprehensive deal — to end the war in exchange for the return of the last hostage,' said Vicky Cohen, whose son Nimrod is a hostage. Israeli police said at least 38 protesters were arrested for allegedly disturbing the peace. President Trump's recent declaration of a crime emergency in Washington, DC, and his decision to federalize the city's police force have already prompted protests and at least one lawsuit. Now, three Republican-led states are sending hundreds of their own National Guard troops to the nation's capital to assist in Trump's efforts. West Virginia plans to send 300 to 400 National Guard troops, South Carolina has authorized the deployment of 200 troops and Ohio said it will send 150. These units will join the 800 DC National Guard troops that Trump has already deployed to patrol the district along with Border Patrol, ICE, FBI and DEA agents. Although Mayor Muriel Bowser's office declined to comment on the deployment of additional troops in DC, she posted on X: 'American soldiers and airmen policing American citizens on American soil is #UnAmerican.' Hurricane Erin became one of the fastest-strengthening Atlantic hurricanes on record when it transformed from a Category 1 storm with 75 mph winds on Friday to a Category 5 with near 160 mph winds just over 24 hours later. So far, the storm's outer bands have dumped heavy rainfall across Puerto Rico and left 100,000 people without power, Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón said Sunday. Additional rainfall of up to 6 inches is forecast over the Turks and Caicos and the eastern Bahamas through Tuesday. But as it churns through the Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean, Erin could double or even triple in size, which may cause rough ocean conditions across much of the western Atlantic, the Hurricane Center said. While the storm is forecast to stay well offshore, its expansive wind field is already sending large swells outward for hundreds of miles and bringing dangerous rip currents to US shores. Satellites will face greater risks in the coming decades during solar-triggered geomagnetic storms because of the effect that climate pollution has on Earth's atmosphere, a new study found. As planet-warming carbon dioxide increases in the upper atmosphere, it will likely make the air less dense. Geomagnetic storms have the opposite effect; they increase how dense the air is in these upper layers, making it difficult for satellites to maintain their speed and altitude. During their study, researchers found that geomagnetic storms later this century could cause bigger spikes in atmospheric density because Earth's upper atmosphere will be less dense overall. Such a rapid throttling up of atmospheric density may damage critical satellite networks — including those used for GPS and communications — and cause problems for society at the Earth's surface. GET '5 THINGS' IN YOUR INBOX If your day doesn't start until you're up to speed on the latest headlines, then let us introduce you to your new favorite morning fix. Sign up here for the '5 Things' newsletter. Despite back-to-work orders from the Canadian government, more than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants plan to continue their strike. The tennis champ decided to see a doctor after noticing symptoms such as double vision and weakness in her arms and legs. The wildly popular online gaming platform is accused of perpetuating an environment where sexual predators 'thrive, unite, hunt and victimize kids.' The thrash metal giants are planning to bid their final farewell in 2026. Here are 12 of America's most iconic sandwiches and where to eat them. British actor Terence Stamp dies at 87Stamp appeared in dozens of movies, but he was best known to American audiences for playing General Zod in two 'Superman' films. He later provided the voice of Jor-El, Superman's father, in the hit TV series 'Smallville.' $177 millionThat's how much AT&T has agreed to pay to settle claims related to data breaches in 2024. Millions of customers will be eligible to file claims — and could receive up to $7,500. 'The citizens of the world know what's happening here in the United States, formerly the so-called beacon of democracy. It don't look like that now!' — Spike Lee The Oscar-winning director commenting on President Trump's orders about what should and shouldn't be displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. 🌤️ Check your local forecast to see what you can expect. And he did it all in just one year! Today's edition of 5 Things AM was edited and produced by CNN's Andrew Torgan.