Tensions grow as Trump and DC fight over police authority : NPR
Washington Attorney General, DC, Brian Schwalb, has put a legal action contesting what he calls “the illegal attempt at the federal government to take control of the Metropolitan Police Department of the Columbia District”.
Matt McClain / The Washington Post via Getty Images
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Matt McClain / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Washington – Tension in the national capital intensified on Friday on the question of which controls the city’s metropolitan police service after the prosecutor general of Washington DC filed a federal legal action contesting the White House offer for total control.
“These illegal affirmations of authority will create immediate, devastating and irreparable damage to the district,” said Brian Schwalb in his legal file. “More critical, the order threatens to upset the command structure of the MPD and to carry out operational ravages within the department, endangering public security and law enforcement agents.”
Late late Friday, Schwalb said that he had won a victory in court when federal officials agreed to leave MPD’s daily control in the hands of Metropolitan Police Pamela Smith at least for the moment.
“We hope we no longer have to be back here in court,” he said. Speaking outside the courthouse on Constitution Avenue, Schwalb refused to detailed how the back-room negotiations with the Trump administration in the last 24 hours have been carried out.
Local officials have clearly struggled to avoid this type of shock. When President Trump said he demanded authority on Washington DC on Monday, Mayor Muriel Bowser said that city leaders would comply with the White House directives.
But Bowser and Chef Smith insisted that operational control would remain in their hands.
Then, Thursday, the American prosecutor General Pam Bondi launched this last climbing by moving to appoint an “emergency police commissioner”, giving the post at the height of the senior official of the Drug Enprêment Administration, Terry Cole.
The bondi order indicated that “Commissioner Cole will assume all the powers and duties devoted to the chief of police of the Columbia district”.
A car from the team of the Metropolitan Police Department parked in pâtés of houses in the White House in Washington, DC Monday
Tyrone Turner / Wamu for NPR
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Tyrone Turner / Wamu for NPR
Despite violent crimes in the city reaching a 30 -year -old hollow, Trump said this week that the city is at risk of becoming a “wasteland”.
“Our capital was overwhelmed by violent gangs and criminals thirsty for blood, itinerant crowds of young savages, drug addicts and homeless,” said Trump.
The federal trial filed on Friday by Schwalb claims that the radical complaint of Trump’s federal power on the local police is a clear violation of the Charter of DC Home Rule, established by the Congress. He asked the Federal Court to issue an injunction blocking the Trump administration power game.
In a statement published on social media on Thursday, mayor Bowser also rejected Bondi’s offer for full authority over the police.
“In reference to the ordinance of the American prosecutor, there is no status which transmits the authority of the district personnel to a federal official,” wrote Bowser.
Let us be clear about what the law requires during a declared presidential emergency: it obliges the mayor of Washington, DC to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President.
We have followed the law.
In… pic.twitter.com/xfanqlalfu
– Mayor Muriel Bowser (@mayorbowser) August 15, 2025
Many experts, on the other hand, have described the conflict on the city’s local police authorities as a dangerous moment for American democracy and a high moment for public security.
“On a scale of concern from zero to ten, I am around 11.5,” said Rosa Brooks, a former reserve police officer at the Washington Metropolitan Police Service, DC, who now studies police policy at Georgetown Law School.
“It is quite frightening, it is unprecedented. The symbolic aspect is the territory of the police state,” she added, noting that Trump suggested that the similar federal authority on the police could be extended to other American cities.
According to Brooks, the confusion on who is in charge of MPD officers also poses immediate public security problems for the police and the public.
“I think it’s actually quite dangerous. Whenever you have many armed people and a lack of clarity on who is in charge of what has a really risky situation,” said Brooks.
NPR has contacted the officials of the Columbia district police union for their point of view on how the conflict affects the officers. They have not yet answered.
This legal fight on operational control comes after Trump said on Monday that local police under federal control would act much more aggressively and have the permission of administration officials to do “everything they want”.
