The federal government’s decision to assume control of the Metropolitan Police Department is a troubling overreach that ignores the facts and undermines our democracy. Crime in Washington, D.C. is not spiraling up. It is trending down. Instead of investing in the infrastructures that drive public safety—housing, education, and economic opportunity—the White House has chosen to escalate the drivers of surveillance, conflict, and detention. That choice sends a clear signal: communities in need will be met with punishment, not help.
Though Washington D.C. is unlike other cities, this move still crosses a dangerous line. If this White House can bypass Congress and unilaterally send federal officers into a U.S. city—in spite of receding crime—no community is safe from becoming a target of political convenience. Authoritarian regimes do not emerge fully formed—they are built incrementally, under the guise of “law and order,” until dissent is met with force rather than debate.
Let’s be clear: this unprecedented action is not about public safety. Crime in D.C. has fallen sharply — dropping 26% this year after hitting a 30-year low last year. The data dismantles the fear-based narrative used to justify this federal power grab.
Instead, this takeover weaponizes law enforcement against vulnerable communities, scapegoating unhoused people — nearly half of whom are Black — and militarizing the streets of a city that has no voting representation in Congress. It treats human beings in need of housing and services as enemies to be “removed” rather than neighbors to be supported. This is the politics of division and domination, not safety and care.
Federalizing local police in the absence of a crisis is more than a policy disagreement, it is a warning. It risks normalizing a model of governance in which power is concentrated in the executive branch and deployed to suppress, not protect. History has shown us where such paths lead, and the cost to freedom is steep.
Importantly, this unnecessary infection of public safety with political opportunism is a continuation of attempts to highjack locally elected institutions—disproportionately circumventing the will of Black and Brown communities. The emergency manager laws in Michigan, the separate court systems of Jackson, Mississippi, even the off-cycle new electoral map of Texas all signal a desire for those who write the rules to discard the voices of the most vulnerable in favor of their own interests. The ability to take over a municipal police department risks escalating this trend into a kind of targeted political violence from which nations often do not recover peacefully.
This decision must be met with loud, bipartisan opposition. We call on the leadership of the Metropolitan Police Department, D.C.’s council members, as well as mayors and governors across the country, members of Congress, and everyone who values democratic norms to reject this action. Unchecked policing authority imposed by political whim is incompatible with a free society.
If we do not challenge this precedent now, we may find ourselves powerless to stop the next. Public safety cannot come at the expense of democracy. A democracy that trades away its freedoms for force will soon have neither.