The effectiveness and cost of the National Guard deployment in D.C.
It has now been one year since President Trump declared a "crime emergency" in the nation's capital and deployed thousands of members of the National Guard to its streets. Questions continue to mount over the mission's cost, its legality and its effectiveness in fighting crime. Lisa Desjardins discussed more with Richard Hahn of the Niskanen Center's Criminal Justice Department.
One year after President Trump declared a "crime emergency" and deployed thousands of National Guard troops to Washington D.C., questions remain about the mission's cost, legality, and impact on crime. According to Lisa Desjardins, nearly 5,000 soldiers from over 15 states are patrolling the capital, sparking controversy and criticism from experts who claim crime was already at a 30-year low when the deployment began.
Despite violent crime continuing to drop over the past year, the White House attributes the decline to the deployment of the National Guard and the Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force, which has made 16,000 arrests. However, debate exists over the Guard's effectiveness in combating violent crime. President Trump has even threatened legal action against a critic of a study claiming the Guard had a limited impact.
While the National Guard seems to have impacted low-level opportunistic property crimes like petty theft and car theft, it appears to have had little effect on violent crime, which was the primary focus of deployment. Experts suggest the overall decrease in crime in D.C. over the past three years is due to factors other than the National Guard presence.
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