WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's deployment of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops has produced Humvees on the National Mall and roving bands of agents in tourist areas as part of his stated effort to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital.
But many residents of the city's highest-crime neighborhoods say they haven’t yet seen the results of Trump’s surge in the places it is needed the most.
"He probably doesn’t even know where Anacostia is," Charles Wilson, whose neighborhood has one of DC's highest rates of murder and violent crime. Wilson says the low-income area in DC's Ward 8 has endured several shootouts in which bullets struck houses, cars and even lodged in children’s bedrooms in recent years.
"I think this is all pomp and circumstance,” Wilson says, “to distract people from everything else he is doing."
As part of Trump’s Aug. 11 campaign to take “our capital back" from crime and the homeless the federal government has also seized control of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department.
