As Donald Trump convened reporters at the White House on Monday morning to announce his plans for sending the National Guard onto Washington, D.C., streets and taking over the police department, protesters gathered a block away to denounce what they saw as his plans to put the federal district under his control.
“Nothing Trump is doing right now is about our safety,” Keya Chatterjee, executive director of Free DC, a group advocating for the city’s autonomy, told the 200 or so people gathered on a block of 16th Street Northwest, The Guardian reported.
“What we know from history is that authoritarians always want to control the capital and the people in the capital city. It’s because it’s the fastest way to silence dissent and to accelerate their agenda. And I want to be clear, this is not about crime. This is about what Trump is trying to do to DC in order to take over DC and silence us.”
Resident Lamont Mitchell was not so sure.
Mitchell described how he avoids certain areas on his drive home for fear of being struck by a stray bullet, no longer walks down certain blocks, had his RV stolen and plans to buy a gun.
“As a senior in Washington, I need to feel safe,” said 69-year-old Mitchell, who chairs the Anacostia Coordinating Council community organization. “We gotta take drastic action when drastic action is called for.”
Mayor Muriel Bowser has called Trump’s intervention “unsettling and unprecedented,” as well as unwarranted. City leaders have pointed to statistics showing crimes such as robbery, homicide and assault with a deadly weapon are down, and violent crime hit a 30-year low in 2024.
Yet Washington continues to struggle with rates of violent crime that are higher than cities with similar populations, according to the Real-Time Crime Index from AH Datalytics. Residents are used to hearing reports of violence, though much of it occurs in the city’s poorer, majority Black eastern third, far from the museums and monuments of the National Mall.
They are also used to seeing a lot of police – about 50 law enforcement agencies are already in Washington, D.C., ranging from the citywide Metropolitan Police Department to the obscure zoo police, FBI police and Federal Reserve police, which provide security around specific agencies.
National Guard troops and agents from the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are now expected to be on the streets along with those officers.
But there may be more to the protests. A crowd rental company has seen a massive uptick in inquiries regarding its services in Washington, D.C., amid President Trump’s move to federalize the police force in the nation’s capital, Fox News reported.
“Right now, D.C. inquiries are up roughly 400% compared to the same period in 2024,” Crowds on Demand CEO Adam Swart told Fox News Digital, adding that the time period he is referencing is May to July 2024.
The company always sees a spike in requests during what Swart calls “high stakes political moments.”
“A large share are focused on opposing Trump’s policies in Washington and raising alarms about government overreach,” Swart said. “We’re weighing those offers carefully – because while there’s truth in saying D.C.’s local government has been an abject failure in keeping citizens safe, there’s also a real danger in putting too much power in federal hands. That balance of power matters.”
Swart said the “vast majority” of people at political or advocacy events in D.C. are in some way paid.
“Most people don’t know this, but many protesters are literally on the payroll – Capitol Hill staffers from both parties are often expected to show up at rallies and protests on their own time,” he said. “So yes, most attendees are being paid or are there because it’s part of their job. That doesn’t mean they don’t support the cause – but it does mean these crowds aren’t as ‘organic’ as they appear on TV.”
