Aug. 14 (UPI) — Dressed in camouflage fatigues, National Guard troops patrolled areas of Washington, D.C., on Thursday, dispatched by President Donald Trump to police what he has called “out of control crime” in the city.
In actuality, crime in the district has fallen in recent years or remained flat. Despite this, Guard soldiers patrolled outside Washington’s main train station and swept homeless encampments ahead of a larger, federal law enforcement operation Thursday night in the city.
The federal effort was underway shortly after 6 p.m. EDT Thursday near a popular homeless encampment outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, where most people who often sleep there already had left, The New York Times reported. Most were encouraged to go to homeless shelters.
“The district has worked proactively with homeless residents ahead of these actions to provide services and offers of shelter,” a statement from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services said. “DC will support the engagements with wraparound services and trash pickup but the planned engagements are otherwise the purview of the federal agencies.”
Some residents in the area pushed back on the troop presence in the 14th St. Northwest corridor. Some heckled the soldiers.
“Go home, fascists,” yelled one protester, and “get off our streets,” the New York Post reported. Others stood at the intersection of the checkpoint and directed drivers to go the other way.
Washington’s Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser walked a fine line between praise and criticism of the Guard troops’ deployment.
She called Trump’s efforts “an authoritarian push,” but earlier in the week expressed loose support for the effort.
“The fact that we have more law enforcement and presence in neighborhoods, that may be positive,” she said.
Other protesters were less measured.
“They are the goons of an openly fascist, openly violent regime,” Ryan Zito, a Washington resident told NBC News.
The planned federal operation targeted 25 sites in and around the district’s northwest quadrant, city council member Charles Allen said.
Allen added that he was unclear about the details of the operation, and that the White House had not been in contact with local officials regarding details.
Trump has said the National Guard presence has expanded to a 24-hour operation and will stretch beyond the originally scheduled 30 days.
The Washington deployment could serve as a template for similar operations in the future. The Washington Post, citing internal documents, said Trump could dispatch as many as 600 National Guard troops to military bases in Alabama and Arizona, and that still others could be deployed elsewhere as part of a “reaction force” to respond to violent civil events and crack down on crime.