Teams of federal agents and local police officers rolled out of the parking lot of a U.S. Park Police facility in Southeast Washington on Wednesday evening as President Trump’s takeover of law enforcement in the nation’s capital continued to ramp up.
Scores of National Guard troops gathered on the lawn of the facility by a U.S. Marshals tent, and hundreds of official vehicles filled the parking lot and grass outside the facility in the Anacostia neighborhood.
With 800 National Guard members and Washington’s municipal police department, the Metropolitan Police, under his command, Mr. Trump, who announced the federal crackdown on crime in the capital on Monday, has vowed that the city would be “essentially crime-free” under his watch.
In the next day or two, the D.C. National Guard will build up to about 100 to 200 soldiers out at any given time in support of federal law enforcement officials, Col. Dave Butler, an Army spokesman, said Wednesday. City officials have said the National Guard troops would not have the authority to make arrests. They began arriving on the streets Tuesday evening. About 500 federal law enforcement agents would be deployed in the city, officials have said.
As night fell on the U Street corridor in Northwest Washington, one of the city’s most popular nightlife destinations, a checkpoint was set up, manned by an array of law enforcement officers, including Department of Homeland Security agents. Plastic cones formed a large oval that took up the whole median of a block near 14th Street. Drivers were pulled over for not wearing seatbelts or for busted taillights, among other offenses.
Speaking at the Kennedy Center earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest that he could maintain oversight of crime-fighting in Washington beyond the 30 days that the law allows his administration to be in control of the Metropolitan Police.
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