Lost in the worry about an authoritarian takeover of our nation’s capital is the realization that President Donald Trump’s decision to assume control of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and deploy the National Guard was inspired by a real problem: the significant shortage of MPD officers and the effect that has on the department’s ability to address crime.
Critics of the president’s policies are right that criminal activity in D.C. is decreasing, but the city unfortunately remains one of the most dangerous places in the country. We should celebrate the progress but recognize that not having a fully staffed police force makes it difficult to further reduce crime. The number of law enforcement officers in a city matters, along with other initiatives like addressing the root causes of criminal behavior. D.C. will struggle to continue its forward motion without closing the gap between the 4,000 officers allocated for the MPD and the 3,200 who are currently employed.
It’s counterintuitive to believe that a police department operating without 20% of its assigned strength can meet 100% of its assigned responsibilities. Augmenting MPD with federal law enforcement makes sense in the short term, until the department is brought up to full strength. This criterion provides a clear endpoint to federal involvement in local policing and solves a real problem in the short run: Washington needs more police.
MPD is smaller than it’s been in 50 years, and like most big city police departments has struggled to attract enough applicants to match the rate of separations and retirements. As the federal government deploys its resources to make up for the 800 officers MPD is missing, it should also look for ways to address problems with long-term police recruiting. Both parties have a role to play. Republicans control the government and could provide money to local jurisdictions, allowing them to increase salaries and make police work more financially rewarding. Democrats, who for the most part have stopped using their aggressive anti-police talking points, could make sure they’re not contributing to the type of anti-police sentiment that saps morale and drives down recruiting. Though much improved, they don’t always get this right.
When Bilal Yusuf-Muhammad Abdullah Jr. was killed by police who returned fire after being shot at, Baltimore’s Police Accountability Board called an emergency meeting and implied that BPD policies were to blame for Abdullah’s death rather than his decision to fire on officers. Even if the board didn’t condemn the police outright, their emergency action implied that officers were wrong. Investigation is fair, but this type of immediate second-guessing and subtle condemnation makes a hard job harder. The conversation about who’s at fault when police are involved in a shooting can’t be entirely one-sided. And if we don’t celebrate the police even as we point out and work to correct their flaws, we discourage people from taking on the immense challenges of the job.
Like Washington, D.C., Baltimore remains a dangerous city even as its crime statistics improve. Mirroring the problem in the nation’s capital, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) is short a significant number of officers, missing almost 500 out of an authorized strength of more than 2,500. BPD is making progress toward closing the gap and expects to meet its recruiting goals in the future, but until it does, it makes sense to augment the force with federal officers in the short term, the way we are in D.C. If a hospital were short 20% of its doctors, it would likely save fewer patients. When a police department is short 20% of its officers, it deters less crime.
Rather than saying federal help isn’t needed, Democrats could point out the type of help they need: resources to hire and retain police officers in the long run, and augmentation from federal law enforcement in the short run until staffing has increased. Augmentation, however, shouldn’t mean federal control. Policing of city streets by the federal government is outside the American tradition of maintaining authority and accountability as close to the people as possible. Law enforcement should remain under the direction of the citizens who live in the cities being policed. Even when it’s done properly, augmentation isn’t a long-term solution.
Each moment a federal agent spends riding a Metro train or walking a beat is a moment he or she isn’t performing other critical functions. Using federal law enforcement on the streets of American cities is workable on a temporary basis but not sustainable in the long run. Too many other important missions, from counterterrorism to tax evasion, would end up neglected.
As usual, the president has taken some core truths and pushed them to the extreme. His comment that D.C. police can do “whatever the hell they want” was counterproductive because one of the biggest public safety problems in D.C. is distrust between communities and police. If law enforcement damages rather than repairs its relationship with these communities through heavy-handed tactics, the increased police presence ordered by the president could in the end do more harm than good.
Compared with federal police, the use of the National Guard is more complicated. Each time the president uses the military in American cities, he risks a confrontation between service members and civilians that would damage the positive view most Americans hold of our military. Members of the armed forces are being placed in difficult positions, and if a video surfaces of a soldier hitting an American with a baton, firing rubber bullets into a crowd, or taking lethal action, the view of the military in the eyes of many Americans will change. This is especially risky given how few parts of government still enjoy bipartisan trust and appeal, and losing another would push Americans even further apart than they are. Using the National Guard to perform very limited police functions to augment understaffed police departments might make sense to the American public if explained that way, but only if federal or state law enforcement isn’t available to fill that role and only until staffing improves.
Democrats are right to point out that President Trump’s timing is suspect and his characterization of D.C. crime is inaccurate, but the president is right that crime in our cities remains too high. It’s important that his solutions don’t exacerbate the problem by drawing new divisions between the police and the communities they serve. It’s equally important that we don’t develop a culture of habitually using the armed forces for domestic law enforcement. Doing so would risk the reputations and unifying influence of the Americans who serve.
Colin Pascal (colinjpascal@outlook.com) is a retired Army lieutenant colonel and a graduate student in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C.
