Police state or law enforcement?

There’s no doubt about it: crime has fallen off a cliff in Washington, D.C. since President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops into the area. In fact, crime has fallen dramatically. Even left-leaning websites like CNN are being forced to admit that, yes, the National Guard being in our nation’s capital is having a dramatic effect on crime in the area.
Different sites are reporting different statistics, but the union representing Washington police officers, whose leader has backed Trump’s federal takeover, posted on social media recently that in the 21 days since the takeover was announced, overall crime had dropped 21 percent. That is a significant decline. Numbers are even better for certain crimes, such as carjacking, which has seen an eye-popping 87 percent decline. Washington, D.C., residents can get into vehicles with a signficantly lower chance of some loser criminal sticking a gun in their face and stealing their car. That’s a great thing.
Of course, President Trump just can’t help himself from exaggerating and late last week declared Washington, D.C., was “crime free.” Except he said it in all caps, which we aren’t going to do. Oh, and Washington, D.C. is not crime free. It’s down signficantly, but there is still crime.
It seems counterintuitive there would be so many people protesting against an effort to lower crime in their cities. Are they protecting criminals? Do these big cities love seeing how many people can get shot in a weekend? No, they say. They don’t love crime. But they also don’t want militarization of their cities, and they don’t want U.S. soldiers deployed against their own citizens. This, they claim, is another planned step in some sort of military takeover of the country by President Trump where martial law is the law of the land and he rules like a dictator with an iron fist. That’s a touch dramatic.
In places like Chicago, its mayor and the Illinois governor are fighting potential troop deployment tooth and nail, calling for addressing the root causes of crime and investment in poor areas of the town that gives people hope rather than arresting as many people as possible. Critics say troops in the streets represents a dangerous overreach of federal power, damages community-police relations and that the military’s focus is warfighting, not domestic law enforcement. Partnership or occupation?
According to the Brennan Center, the Posse Comitatus Act bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement except when expressly authorized by law. “This nearly 150-year-old law embodies an American tradition that sees military interference in civilian affairs as a threat to both democracy and personal liberty,” the center wrote.
Yes, you can argue troops in the streets goes against the principals of our country, but what you can’t argue is that it is proving effective. So many arrests are being made in Washington, D.C., the courts can’t keep up.
What remains to be seen is if the crime stays low when the troops leave. Our guess is crime starts to rise again. For now, criminals are on the run. We can’t say we hate it.