A new poll from The Washington Post shows that Washington, D.C. residents are overwhelmingly against the deployment of federal agents and national guardsmen in their streets.
The Post’s random sampling of 604 adult D.C. residents showed that 79 percent of them either somewhat opposed or strongly opposed “Trump ordering the federal government to take control of Washington, D.C.’s police department and ordering the National Guard and FBI to patrol D.C.”
When asked “How much, if at all, do you think the D.C. police should help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants who live in D.C.?” almost 60 percent of respondents replied “not at all,” and over half thought Mayor Muriel Bowser should do more to oppose the president.
Nearly 80 percent of respondents stated that they feel “very safe” or “somewhat safe” in their communities, up two percent from this May. The percentage of respondents who said that crime was an “extremely/very serious” issue in the District also fell significantly, from 50 percent to 31 percent. About 40 percent of August respondents stated that crime was a “moderately serious” issue.
The poll also shows that support for D.C. statehood is at its highest since 1995.
While these numbers give us insight into what just a portion of the city’s more than 700,000 residents are thinking, it’s clear that President Trump’s federal takeover has not had the desired effect.
It turns out that having masked HSI, FBI, and other agents setting up checkpoints, harassing people for smoking weed, and pulling delivery drivers off of their scooters mid-route does not actually make D.C. residents feel safer.
“Trump’s overheated rhetoric about D.C. crime has evoked strong feelings among many residents offended by such characterizations of their city,” George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government Dean Mark Rozell told the Post. “A federalized takeover of any aspect of a city’s operations will naturally create a backlash, and that is clearly happening here,” he said.
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