WASHINGTON — In the neighborhood where Washington saw its first homicide in nearly two weeks early Tuesday, residents are divided over the value of President Donald Trump’s surge of federal law enforcement forces into the city.
NBC News talked to more than a dozen people Tuesday who live and work in the area surrounding the 300 block of Anacostia Road in Southeast D.C., where, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, city officers had responded to a fatal shooting shortly after midnight. It was the first homicide reported in D.C. since Aug. 13.
On Tuesday afternoon, after schools had let out for the day, more than a half-dozen children loitered on the front steps of an apartment complex on the block where the shooting occurred.
The local response to Trump’s “federal takeover” of D.C. was mixed, with some crediting him for taking an active interest in public safety in the city and others criticizing him for a buildup they described as unnecessary or aimed at the wrong parts of the city.
“I really don’t have no problem with police presence,” said Brian Williams, 56, who reported seeing National Guard, FBI and local police forces in the neighborhood. “It’s much-needed in certain neighborhoods of the district. Not all of them is needed, but some of them is needed.”
But, Williams added, “the ones that’s needed, you don’t see the presence in there.”
Some residents said they had not seen National Guard or federal agents in their neighborhood at all, and a Washington Post map of such sightings, published Aug. 15, showed a much heavier presence in the wealthier and more tourist-trafficked wards west of the Anacostia River.
Trump had boasted Monday that it had been “many years since we went a week without having a murder.” (D.C. had a 16-day streak earlier this year.) National Guard troops began arriving in D.C. on Aug. 12 in response to Trump’s declaration of a “crime emergency” in the nation’s capital.
Federal agents are focused on arresting violent offenders, including drug dealers — often by executing warrants — rather than patrolling neighborhoods, according to a White House official.
“Thanks to President Trump’s bold action, federal and local officers have been going into high-crime areas all across the Washington, D.C., to stop dangerous criminals,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said. “In fact, the violent crime plaguing the city’s communities is exactly why President Trump is cracking down on crime and restoring law and order. The Trump Administration will not rest until D.C. is the safest city in the country.”
Most of the people in the neighborhood surrounding Tuesday’s shooting declined to give their full names out of fear of retribution. Several said they saw police on Anacostia Road after the homicide.
A 77-year-old man who identified himself only as Ray said police show up “only when something like that happens.” He said he has not seen much change in the weeks since Trump’s policy went into effect — that he feels no difference in his level of safety.
“I don’t mess with nobody,” he said. “I speak to [people], they speak to me, and then I go in the house.”
For some residents, the increased law enforcement presence has the perverse consequence of creating fear and anxiety among people who are not committing crimes.
“When I saw the police presence, I felt threatened here in this neighborhood, right across the street,” said Juan, who declined to give his last name, pointing to 37th Street SE, which runs roughly parallel to Anacostia Road in D.C.’s 7th Ward.
Juan, who identified himself as a member of the LGBTQ community, said he has sporadically seen a federal presence, including agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is opposed to that presence.
“Don’t come to neighborhoods where people are in their residence. Don’t go and harass the Hispanic people that are on their way home from work,” he said. “Because you’re targeting the citizens, you’re targeting the law-abiding citizens who are taxpayers, who are working people, working citizens of the community, instead of the people who are causing the riffraff, the drama.”
A woman who gave her name as Israel, who works in the area around Tuesday morning’s shooting but lives in the River Turn section of the city on the west side of the Anacostia River, said she is comfortable with the stepped-up federal presence Trump has ordered.
“I’m not mad at him,” she said. “People are scared to come outside. Your kids can’t play outside.”
Israel added that she wants juveniles to be prosecuted as adults to deter crime.
“Right now, they’re getting a slap on the wrist,” she said. “They need to get more of a sentence, like an adult. … They need to be locked up. Because as long as they keep letting them out, they’re going to keep stealing cars, they’re going to keep robbing stores.”
Trump said Monday that he is so pleased with the results in D.C. that he wants to expand the program — which features federal agents focusing on local law enforcement and a National Guard presence — to other cities, including Chicago.
“Within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago, just like we have no crime in D.C.,” he told reporters Monday. On Tuesday, a White House official said federal agents have made 1,094 arrests in the nation’s capital since Trump ordered the surge on Aug. 7, a figure that included 87 arrests Monday.
Williams, who held a can of Icehouse beer as he sat on a stoop in an apartment complex between 37th Street and Anacostia Road, said there are parts of the city — specifically in the city’s 8th Ward — where increased law enforcement would be more effective.
He acknowledged that the visibility of local and federal authorities has altered behavior in his neighborhood, but he wondered how long that will last.
“I’ve seen the difference — at night, you don’t see as much people as you used to, because they know the presence is out here,” he said. “But, like, what’s going to happen when they go away?”
This article was published by NBC News on 2025-08-26 19:32:00
View Original Post
