The Lowest Crime Rate in 30 Years — And the Case for Martial Law
The president federalizes the DC police. Which city is next?
Detroit, 1967. The smoke rises in pillars. Paratroopers in combat gear march past burned-out shops, bayonets fixed. The president’s voice crackles over the radio: “By executive order, I have taken control of the Michigan National Guard.” The local police chief is no longer in charge of his own streets.
It was an emergency. People were dying. Fires were burning. A city was coming apart.
Fast forward to now. President Trump has just announced he is federalizing Washington, D.C.’s law enforcement. He says the city is drowning in crime.
The numbers say otherwise. Homicides and overall crime in D.C. are at a thirty-year low. The streets are calmer than they have been in a generation. But the president is taking over anyway.
How? A little-known section of the D.C. Home Rule Act gives him the power to take control of the city’s police. It was designed for moments of true crisis. Trump says this is one of those moments.
We have seen federal takeovers of local law enforcement before. Abraham Lincoln brought policing in the capital directly under federal control in 1861 during the Civil War. Lyndon Johnson sent the Army into Detroit in 1967 to stop deadly riots. Trump sent federal agents into Portland and other cities in 2020 to confront protests.
The difference is that in those cases, there was an actual emergency, or at least a plausible claim of one. This time, there is no emergency.
Trump also hinted that D.C. may not be the last city to see this kind of move. He floated the idea of targeting other “trouble cities.” That is political code for large cities run by Democrats.
At the same time, ICE has been running raids in multiple cities using masked, unidentified officers. They arrive in unmarked vans, sweep people up, and refuse to answer questions about who they are or where they are taking them. That is not traditional law enforcement. It is the way secret police operate in authoritarian states.
This is how authoritarian leaders around the world have tightened their grip without firing a shot. Vladimir Putin used terrorist incidents as a pretext to bring regional police under Kremlin control, starting with areas that resisted him politically. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared a state of emergency after a failed coup, sent national forces into opposition-led cities, and replaced local officials with loyalists. Viktor Orbán targeted municipalities run by political opponents, expanded national police oversight there, and shifted investigative powers away from local authorities.
The pattern is the same: pick a city, declare it unsafe, and take it over in the name of public order. Once it becomes normal, move on to the next. Adolf Hitler did it in the 1930s after the Reichstag fire. Ferdinand Marcos did it under martial law in the Philippines. The methods change with time, but the playbook has not.
If the president — any president, regardless of party — can take over the police force of a city that is safer than it has been in thirty years, what makes you think yours won’t be next?
Experts say current laws would prevent this. The president can’t deputize federal troops to carry out law enforcement without the cooperation of state leaders. But again and again, we’ve seen Donald Trump do things anyway, wait for a court to say he can’t, and then appeal and slow down the process, all while what he wants to happen continues happening.
Picture this. Your neighborhood looks the same as it did yesterday. The corner store is still there. The bus stop is still there. The morning light is the same. But the badge on the officer’s chest no longer answers to the mayor you elected.
Sometimes, democracy erodes quietly, with only the sound of a pen on a desk.
Hallmarks of a “Secret Police”
The term “secret police” doesn’t just mean officers keeping their investigations quiet. It means a security force that operates outside normal legal rules, is loyal to a political leader rather than the public, and uses fear to control people. Warning signs include:
Officers who hide their identities and wear masks without clear insignia
Unmarked vehicles with no official markings
Arrests without public explanation or a clear paper trail
Detaining people without telling them their rights or where they are being taken
Answering to a political figure instead of an independent judicial or civilian authority
When you see these practices, you are looking at a force that is acting like an arm of a political regime, not a public service.
About the D.C. Home Rule Act
Washington, D.C. is not a state, so Congress and the president have more direct authority over it than they do over other cities. In 1973, Congress passed the Home Rule Act to let D.C. voters elect their own mayor and city council, and to give them more say over local matters. But the law kept a list of powers in federal hands, including the right for the president to take control of the D.C. police in a crisis. This was meant for major emergencies like riots, disasters, or war. It has been used very rarely, and almost always when there was a clear, immediate threat to public safety.