Trump Sent Thousands Of National Guard Troops To Fight Crime In Washington. What Are They Doing?

Thousands of National Guard troops deployed to Washington by US President Donald Trump as part of his crime-fighting campaign have played a limited role in dealing with serious offences, with soldiers more often involved in minor incidents, assisting police or witnessing crimes, a Reuters review of court records has found.

Trump sent thousands of National Guard troops into the US capital last August as the centrepiece of his effort to combat crime, particularly in cities run by Democrats. Every day, small groups of soldiers in camouflage and body armour patrol tourist-heavy areas of the capital, including national monuments, subway stations and the area around its professional baseball park. Around 4,500 soldiers are now deployed in Washington, more than the city’s 3,200 police officers. Yet since the deployment began, National Guard personnel have been mentioned in only about 1.3% of criminal cases filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, which handles nearly all criminal prosecutions in the city.

Reuters found that the soldiers were mostly involved in minor incidents in wealthier, whiter and less dangerous parts of Washington. Court records contained no reference to National Guard troops carrying out law enforcement in neighbourhoods where about 82% of the city’s 859 murders occurred over the past five years.

Soldiers’ Role Mostly Limited To Minor Offences

Well past midnight one day this spring, three police officers arrived at a nightclub where a man was stomping on a young woman lying on the pavement. The officers stopped the attack and arrested him.

But police officer Xavier Jimenez noted in his report that “There was approximately 15 national guard members in the area on routine ​patrol who did not take any action.”

The incident was among the cases reviewed in an examination of every publicly available charging document filed in the Superior Court, alongside interviews with lawyers, residents, service members and others familiar with the deployment.

Reuters found 217 criminal cases in which police mentioned National Guard involvement. In 62 cases, soldiers themselves stopped people suspected of crimes, while in another 43 cases they helped police officers make arrests.

Many of those incidents involved relatively minor offences.

In October, soldiers chased a man who had taken two slices of pizza and offered $2 as partial payment, according to police records. A week later, they stopped a man who threw a rock at a bus. In April, they detained a man accused of stealing two beef jerky sticks worth about $7 from a pharmacy. Last month, six soldiers held a woman who drank a bottle of root beer without paying.

The troops have sometimes broken up fights and assaults. Videos obtained by community groups also show groups of 20 or more soldiers stationed outside subway stations at night, blocking teenagers from descending escalators to enforce a city curfew.

Although the guardsmen have been deputised as US Marshals, government records show they have limited law-enforcement powers. They can detain suspects but must call police officers to make a formal arrest. The Defence Department has described their duties as “presence patrols”, intended as a visible show of force to deter crime rather than respond directly to it.

Little Evidence Of Patrols In High-Crime Areas

The soldiers were more likely to appear in arrest records in neighbourhoods with higher incomes, more college-educated residents and larger white populations. Most arrests involving National Guard personnel took place either near the city’s core or around subway stops.

Reuters used the locations of incidents in court records to identify areas where soldiers either assisted police or sought help from them, then compared those neighbourhoods with the rest of Washington. The analysis does not account for locations where troops may have been deployed but did not interact with law enforcement. However, it suggests their presence was not focused on the areas that had experienced the highest levels of violent crime.

Court records describe 35 instances in which National Guard troops were witnesses to crimes, sometimes simply watching until police arrived. They told officers about a drug deal, a man urinating in public, another man who exposed himself to a subway policeman and two men writing with chalk on a monument outside the city’s train station, one of them wearing a banana costume.

Salim Adofo, an outreach coordinator with the Anacostia Coordinating Council, a non-profit operating in a low-income part of Washington, said the findings matched his experience.

“I haven’t seen them all year,” he said.

The Rev. Norman Nixon, pastor of the Union Temple Baptist Church, said soldiers were more visible than their policing role suggested.

“It’s like they brought people here from all across the country, just to be here. And they harass people a lot more than they are actually doing police work,” he said.

The Rev. William Young, who lives in the Navy Yard neighbourhood where soldiers patrol frequently, also questioned whether their presence made residents safer.

“It’s a way of keeping fear in all of us,” he said. “This is not how a capital of democracy should be protected, by having soldiers marching to protect the streets.”

Soldiers Also Targeted In Criminal Incidents

The National Guard personnel themselves have frequently been victims of crime.

Reuters found 62 cases in which people were charged with pushing, punching or threatening soldiers. Nine people were accused of spitting on them.

In one case, a man allegedly tried to grab a soldier’s pistol while the soldier attempted to arrest him for stealing baseball caps at a subway station. Another man was charged after he told a group of soldiers that he wanted to “shoot you, in between your balls, with a ​bazooka,” according to a police report.

Two off-duty soldiers were also arrested by Washington police for violating the city’s firearms laws. The US Attorney’s Office later dropped charges against both.

The risks facing the troops were underscored last year when two soldiers from West Virginia were shot near the White House, killing one of them.

The deployment also came under scrutiny after the death of Keon Jones, who was stabbed in April near a waterfront area lined with hotels and restaurants.

National Guard soldiers found Jones unresponsive after a fight and called emergency services. They later told police they believed he was merely intoxicated. They did not realise until officers arrived that Jones had been stabbed so severely that his intestines were spilling out. He died in hospital about two hours later.

His aunt, Evelyn Jones, questioned whether the soldiers could have responded differently.

“They could have done more to help him,” she said.

This summer, the troops took on another mission: guarding the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The Trump administration had spent millions of dollars renovating the pool, only for it to turn green with algae as its liner peeled away. Trump claimed the pool had been sabotaged by vandals, but US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro eventually conceded that a government contractor “botched” the job.

Crime Has Fallen, But Impact Of Deployment Is Unclear

The National Guard deployment has been costly. The Trump administration told Congress last year that sending guardsmen to Washington cost about $1.65 million a day, before officials doubled the number of troops this summer. The city’s most recent police budget was about $1.5 million a day.

The administration has told Congress it plans to continue sending soldiers to Washington until the end of Trump’s presidency in 2029, at a cost of $1.4 billion. It has not said how many troops will remain deployed.

The US has traditionally used National Guard soldiers to respond to disasters, help secure major events such as the Super Bowl and occasionally quell riots, rather than to carry out everyday crime-fighting. Trump has also authorised smaller deployments in Memphis and New Orleans and has discussed sending soldiers to other cities.

Gen. Randy Manner, who retired in 2012 as the second-in-command of the National Guard Bureau, said soldiers were not suited to routine policing.

“You do not want armed soldiers on the streets of America,” he said, adding that soldiers were ill-prepared for police work and more expensive than hiring more police officers.

Determining the deployment’s effect on crime in Washington is complicated by the presence of hundreds of additional federal agents sent into the city by the Trump administration. Those agents have largely functioned as local police officers.

The number of murders in Washington has fallen for the third consecutive year. But Reuters noted that homicide numbers have also declined in cities where the government has not sent soldiers or additional federal agents. Meanwhile, the total number of violent crimes reported by city police between January and mid-August — including serious assaults, robberies, sex offences and homicides — was about 4% higher than last year.

A study by the non-partisan Niskanen Center in May found that sending soldiers into Washington led to fewer stolen cars but had no impact on violent crime.

Charles Stimson, a senior fellow at the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation, said the visibility of the troops served as a deterrent.

“When you’re speeding and you see a cop, you slow down,” he said. “If those National Guard went poof and left town ⁠tomorrow, crime would go up.”

But Reuters’ review of court records found little evidence of the troops’ presence in the high-crime neighbourhoods where they might have responded to more serious offences. Instead, their involvement was concentrated in safer parts of the capital.

The White House did not respond to questions about the soldiers’ work. Spokeswoman Lauren Bis said Trump’s efforts in the city have “driven down crime, beautified the city, and improved quality of life for countless individuals.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has called the deployment “problematic”, declined to comment, as did the city’s police department.

The National Guard taskforce managing the Washington deployment did not respond to questions about its work or its cost. A spokeswoman, Leona Hendrickson, said soldiers were too busy to be interviewed.