Over a month after deploying the National Guard to Washington D.C., President Donald Trump has celebrated the results, claiming D.C. is “like a different city” and sent more troops to other U.S. cities. Crime as a whole has dropped in D.C., but Trump shouldn’t expect these numbers to continue once the National Guard is removed.
The purpose of the National Guard is to defend the U.S. homeland and “protect life and property” when deployed as disaster response. To justify their deployment in D.C., Trump declared a public safety emergency.
However, the National Guard’s deployment has not been as game-changing as Trump claims. On Sept. 5, NPR reported their findings on arrests in D.C. after the National Guard’s deployment, and found that around 80% of the more than 1,050 cases that had gone to the Superior Court were misdemeanors, warrants, traffic offenses or prosecutors dropping the case. Only the remaining 20% were for felonies which include more serious offenses such as drug and gun crimes.
An important question is whether the National Guard’s deployment will have a long-term deterrent effect on crime.
Kristopher Robison, an associate professor of sociology, believes the deployment of the National Guard will not have any impact on future crime.
“I doubt it, especially since they can’t do any assistant policing, they can only train, stand in the background and whatnot,” Robison said.
As Robison points out, the National Guard cannot carry out arrests outside of specific situations. Being activated by the president, but not to enforce a federal court order, is not one of these situations.
So what is the National Guard doing in D.C. if they can’t arrest criminals?
“Some of these National Guard troops, they’re out there mowing the lawn in some places because there just wasn’t a whole lot for them to do,” Robison said. “They have also been cleaning graffiti and trash, and repainting fences.”
Though the National Guard has also detained some suspects until the police arrived and patrolled alongside civilian officers, these actions hardly seem important enough to justify the estimated cost of $200 million from taxpayers for this deployment. If this is the best the National Guard can do in D.C. despite all the money being spent, then it is unlikely that they will perform any better in Memphis, Chicago or any other U.S. cities Trump orders them to “clean up.”
