View from a recent D.C. resident. “This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” President Trump announced Monday as he touted the federal takeover of the District’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).
This, after already ordering various federal law enforcement agencies to ramp up local patrols and sending National Guard troops to support law enforcement in the capital.
And despite the wild shrieking on the left, and most major news media, Trump’s MPD takeover is perfectly constitutional and long overdue. I say this not as a MAGA Trump supporter, but as a recent five-year resident of D.C. — only blocks from the White House — and a security and protection professional with experience all over the city.
Despite living in an upscale building, we moved out of D.C. late last year, mostly because of the crime, drugs, filth, and homelessness. While Democrats’ knee jerk response is that crime is allegedly down in D.C., statistics are being manipulated, and reality on the ground is far different from those stats.
From 2020 to 2024, I personally dealt with crack addicts and dealers, petty criminals, and homeless camps just outside our building on 13th and M St., Northwest. A dirty homeless tent city and drug den sprung up on Thomas Circle yards from our building’s side entrance; just one of many across the city.
And it grew larger and larger for over a year. Not through the fault of the police, but due to the city’s insane crime-friendly policies.
Despite constant citizen complaints to the MPD about drugs and crime, the camp was not removed until a murder was committed on site in May of 2022, in broad daylight.
And this was a supposedly “good part” of D.C.
But this wasn’t the only murder in the relatively small area of D.C. these last few years.
To highlight the point, the Washington Post reports that a 33-year-old man was shot and killed in the District just hours after Trump announced he was taking control of the D.C. police.
The murder happened in Northwest (NW) Washington within two blocks of our old residence and a half-mile of where two of the high-profile homicides the president cited occurred.
Last month near Seventh and M streets NW a young GOP congressional intern was killed by a stray bullet. And that killing was just north of the K Street block where a former Trump government official was killed in his car last year during an attempted carjacking while he was waiting to pick up his wife.
Last week, near Logan Circle, a group of teenage perpetrators viciously assaulted and attempted to carjack a 19-year-old former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee.
In May a man opened fire 21 times on a young couple exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., shooting the victims in the back and then firing again at the woman as she tried to crawl away, killing them both.
Also, in May a man was found shot and killed in the 1600 block of 14th Street, Northwest, again near Logan Circle.
And then there are these examples affecting law enforcement officers.
In July 2024, a deputy U.S. Marshal shot and wounded an 18-year-old who tried to carjack him while he was protecting Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s home in Washington, D.C.
In October 2023, an off-duty federal protective service officer shot and killed a 13-year-old, who along with a teenage accomplice, attempted to carjack the officer, while he waited to begin an overnight shift in a downtown D.C. federal building.
On November 29, 2023, an off-duty FBI agent was carjacked at gunpoint in Washington, D.C., near Capitol Hill.
Also in November, 2023, Secret Service agents protecting then-President Joe Biden’s granddaughter in the swanky Georgetown area of D.C. shot at robbers breaking into their official government vehicle.
In that same month, a man stole a marked University of D.C. police SUV and used it to go shopping.
Finally, in the summer of 2021 a 53-year-old Peace Corps official was struck by a stray bullet shortly after having dinner with his wife also in the Logan Circle area, only blocks from our building.
And these are only the very serious cases I remember off the top of my head from my time living and working in D.C. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the number and viciousness of the crimes committed in the predominantly Black Southeast area of D.C. that is about as lawless as it gets, and officers call the “wild west.”
The crime there is rampant and almost all the perpetrators and victims are Black. Some, only infants or toddlers, as in the case of the three-year-old girl hit and killed by a stray bullet in July.
While Democrats and the media will attempt to downplay the statistics, and MPD leaders have been accused of cooking the books to make crime stats look better, some stats don’t lie.
The District only has about 700,000 residents, far less than other major U.S. cities whose numbers are in the millions.
Still, according to the White House, in 2024, D.C. had a homicide rate of 27.3 per 100,000 residents, the fourth-highest in the country, and nearly six times higher than New York City and also higher than Atlanta, Chicago, and Compton, Los Angeles.
If Washington, D.C. was a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the nation.
Vehicle theft is more than three times the national average — ranking it among the most dangerous cities in the world. In 2024, there were triple the number of carjackings compared to 2018.
In the first seven months of 2025, there have already been nearly 100 homicides, 1,600 violent crimes and nearly 16,000 total crimes reported.
While most Democrats and major media will try to vilify Trump’s effort, many people, especially local Black crime victims, but also white liberals living and working in D.C., privately applaud Trump for trying to make the city safer.
And so do most of the overworked, understaffed, and micromanaged street cops of the MPD who, until now, have been fighting crime with both hands tied behind their backs.
They are all praying that Trump’s takeover is successful.
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Trump works to stop crime, and leftists want it back. Why is this out of the ordinary?