As federal agents surge in the capital, D.C. police chief welcomes boost

President Donald Trump on Wednesday floated asking Congress to extend the emergency allowing him to federalize D.C. police as federal law enforcement agents and National Guard troops began roaming the streets of D.C. Tuesday night – a law enforcement boost that D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said could be useful.

“We’re going to be asking for extensions on that – long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days,” Trump said at the Kennedy Center in Washington, adding that his administration would be pushing a crime bill involving D.C. to use the city as “a very positive example.”

The on-the-ground impact of Trump’s federal actions came into view Tuesday night, with late-night diners in Georgetown gawking at a group of FBI and ATF agents and National Guard Humvees staged near the Washington Monument. According to the White House, the effort resulted in 43 arrests overnight, and officials said a significantly higher National Guard presence would be felt Wednesday evening, and the operation would soon be transitioning to a 24/7 operation.

But as the federal presence came into clearer focus, Bowser began deploying dual messaging: hardening her tone against Trump’s executive action in a community forum Tuesday night while on live television Wednesday morning still projecting optimism in cooperating with federal partners.

Speaking to community leaders on Zoom on Tuesday night, Bowser called Trump’s actions an “authoritarian push” in her firmest condemnation yet of one of the most drastic federal interventions in D.C.’s half-century history of home rule, as she began to more forcefully dispute the disparaging characterization of the nation’s capital Trump has repeatedly painted.

“We don’t live in a dirty city. We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks. We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed,” Bowser said.

Appearing on FOX5 Wednesday morning, a more tempered Bowser and Smith said a boost in law enforcement efforts from federal partners could help the city further drive down crime and get more guns off the street – mirroring the kind of pragmatic approach the mayor presiding over the deep-blue city has taken for months in the second Trump administration.

“What we want to do is make sure this federal surge is useful for us, and that’s what the chief has been very, very good in working to accomplish,” Bowser said.

“You’re talking about 500 additional personnel in the District of Columbia,” Smith said. “We’re down in numbers with our D.C. police officers. So this enhanced presence is going to impact us in a positive way.”

It’s unclear how the perception of Trump’s federal surge matches what happens on the street. The surge has surpassed 100 arrests since the operation began on Aug. 7, according to a White House official. The tally from the White House includes serving 10 warrants and 23 immigration enforcement actions.

On Tuesday night, local DJ Isaiah May, 33, was on stage at a comedy show he emcees in Columbia Heights when the sirens began blaring and the crowd rushed to the windows. May estimated there were 40 law enforcement members, including D.C. police and U.S. Border Patrol, at the intersection of 14th Street and Perry Place NW.

He said he saw authorities detaining a man riding a dirt bike.

President Donald Trump had singled out young people on motorbikes as a source of “caravans of mass youth” during his Monday news conference announcing the surge, suggesting they “rampaged through city streets.”

D.C. Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that at 11 p.m. at the same location, an e-bike collided with a parked police cruiser. Police called an ambulance to treat the bike rider, but he refused medical treatment.

There were no immediate official reports of arrests from the incident.

May said passersby began to record, livestream on social media and call the agents “fascists.”

“The only people that can change what’s going on in the inner city is people in the inner city,” May said.

Still, when it comes to measuring the success of the federal surge, Bowser said on FOX5 that in her meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi and other federal partners on Wednesday, no clear metric for success was offered.

She said it could include sweeping more illegal guns off the street.

“We certainly want to know what we’re being measured against, and they regard it as a success to have more presence and to take more guns off the street, and we do too. That’s what MPD works on every single day, is taking more guns off the street.”

A small number of the about 800 National Guard members who are expected to be a part of the federalization of the city’s police force had been mobilized as of Tuesday afternoon, defense officials said, with more expected in coming days as D.C. faces more threats to its limited right to self-governance than any other time in modern history.

The use of the guard for a typically local function brings to bear the threats that Trump has lobbed at the city’s autonomy for months and, critics fear, exposes residents to potentially unpredictable encounters with a domestically deployed military force.

Five Humvees lined the street at the corner of Jefferson Drive and 14th Street SW, between the National Museum for African American History and Culture and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. National Guard troops walked the sidewalks that form walking paths around the monuments, as three DEA agents headed east toward the U.S. Capitol. Vehicles marked U.S. Secret Service Police and U.S. Park Police were parked nearby.

While the National Guard was preparing to activate, Bowser spent an hour Tuesday night answering residents’ questions in a live video chat streamed on social media. She acknowledged that she did not know exactly how the federal resources would be deployed, but said her expectation was that the National Guard troops would be deployed to federal parks, monuments and federal buildings, while increased federal law enforcement would be deployed to higher crime areas of the city.

One resident asked where federal resources could help. Bowser suggested some special focus areas highlighted by the police chief -including homicide reduction, drug enforcement zones and juvenile curfew enforcement zones.

Asked about homeless outreach, Bowser and one of her top officials, City Administrator Kevin Donahue, said city workers had been focused on expanding shelter capacity and visiting people sleeping outside, trying to get people in to shelter before federal law enforcement possibly clears them out.

Another asked how the city could alleviate the fears of children encountering the National Guard or federal police on their routes to school. Bowser said she was going to think about ways to make their presence feel less intimidating.

She encouraged parents to keep close tabs on their children, wary that any misbehavior involving large groups of teens could become a political target during Trump’s operation.

“You really need to know where your kids are,” Bowser said. “I think we have some kids that are not criminals, but they are getting together in big groups and causing some really – they’re causing destruction. And so this is the type of thing that makes for good TV. So don’t let your kids be a part of that – know where your kids are. And make sure they’re not grouping together, because they will be a target.”

She also described an apparent tension: While she felt the moment demanded pragmatic decorum, she also had strong feelings about the Trump administration’s incursion on her turf.

“My jobs are many right now – and part of it is just practically managing us through this crisis,” Bowser said.