The administration of US President Donald Trump has reversed course and agreed to leave the Washington, DC police chief in control of the department, after Washington officials and the United States Justice Department negotiated a deal at the urging of a federal judge.
Trump had placed Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under federal control on Monday and ordered the deployment of 800 National Guard troops onto the streets of the capital, claiming a surge in crime.
On Friday afternoon, a deal was hammered out at a federal court hearing after Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb had sought a court order blocking Trump’s police takeover as illegal.
Trump administration lawyers conceded that Pamela Smith, the police chief appointed by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, would remain in command of the Metropolitan Police Department, according to the accord presented by the two sides to US District Judge Ana Reyes.
But US Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a new memo, directed the district’s police to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement regardless of any city law.
Meanwhile, the precise role of Drug Enforcement Administration head Terry Cole, who had been named by Bondi as the city’s “emergency police commissioner” under Trump’s takeover bid, is still to be hashed out in further talks.
In a social media post on Friday evening, Bondi criticised Schwalb, saying he “continues to oppose our efforts to improve public safety”.
But she added, “We remain committed to working closely with Mayor Bowser.”
Legal battle
Friday’s legal battle is the latest evidence of the escalating tensions in mostly Democratic Washington, DC.
As the weekend approached, though, signs across the city — from the streets to the legal system — suggested a deepening crisis over who controls the city’s immigration and policing policies, the district’s right to govern itself and daily life for the millions of people who live and work in the metro area.
Bowser’s office said late on Friday that it was still evaluating how it can comply with the new Bondi order on immigration enforcement operations. The police department already eased some restrictions on cooperating with federal officials facilitating Trump’s mass-deportation campaign but reaffirmed that it would follow the district’s sanctuary city laws.
In a letter sent Friday night to DC citizens, Bowser wrote: “It has been an unsettling and unprecedented week in our city. Over the course of a week, the surge in federal law enforcement across DC has created waves of anxiety.”
She added that “our limited self-government has never faced the type of test we are facing right now,” but added that if Washingtonians stick together, “we will show the entire nation what it looks like to fight for American democracy – even when we don’t have full access to it.”
The police takeover is the latest move by Trump to test the limits of his legal authorities to carry out his agenda, relying on obscure statutes and a supposed state of emergency to bolster his tough-on-crime message and his plans to speed up the mass deportation of undocumented people in the United States.
While Washington has grappled with spikes in violence and visible homelessness, the city’s homicide rate ranks below those of several other major US cities, and the capital is not in the throes of the public safety collapse the Trump administration has portrayed.
The president has more power over the nation’s capital than other cities, but DC has elected its own mayor and city council since the Home Rule Act was signed in 1973.
