Just to be perfectly clear, President Trump invoking his emergency powers to deploy the D.C. National Guard to take over policing in the District had nothing to do with a crime emergency (there is no emergency) and everything to do with seizing control of local government functions as a way to wreak retribution on his perceived political enemies. Not only do the data show a significant decrease in serious crimes in D.C. from 2024 to 2025 — it is at its lowest level in 30 years — but some cities in the states, like Tennessee and Ohio, whose Republican governors sent their states’ National Guard troops to D.C., have experienced higher crime rates than has the nation’s Capital.
For sake of argument, however, let’s assume that President Trump is justified in wanting to address a still-serious crime problem in D.C. Is this truly the best way to deal with it?
Almost certainly it is not. First, sending the military into the city has severed the bonds of trust and confidence built up over many years between the residents and their police department. The city now has the look and feel of being under military occupation, raising substantially the level of fear and mistrust, undermining the local police, and making their job of policing vastly more difficult.
Second, the job of policing is difficult enough as it is, requiring a wide range of skills and training that National Guard troops simply do not have. Expecting that untrained soldiers on the streets will reduce the crime rate is absurd. Further, the troop deployment removes these soldiers from training for the Guard’s main mission of defense against foreign invasion or insurrection.
Third, data show that a large fraction of police calls throughout the country are for domestic violence incidents and mental health crises. It is generally agreed among the experts that de-escalation strategies by trained mental health professionals are the best way to deal with such incidents. Since the country has a serious shortage of mental health professionals, one centerpiece of police reform throughout the country is providing de-escalation training to police officers.
If Trump were really serious about reducing crime, he would support the police by backing efforts at police reform, including providing them with mandatory de-escalation training.
De-escalation training is just one component of police reform efforts, albeit a very important one. Most reform proposals focus on increased accountability. There are many ways to accomplish this, including establishing independent civilian oversight and review boards, legally empowered to investigate police misconduct and excessive use of force; mandating background checks in hiring and recruitment; limiting police use of “qualified immunity” from prosecution; requiring the use of body cameras; banning the use of chokeholds; and banning the sale of military equipment to police departments.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, a comprehensive police reform bill introduced in the 117th Congress, included all of the above provisions in it, but never passed in the U. S. Senate because of solid Republican opposition. Some local governments have tried to implement measures of police reform. Some of these efforts have been successful, and others have had only limited or no success.
Why has police reform in the U.S. been so difficult?
It is not the cost. Most police reform efforts have little to no cost. The big cost is in putting more resources into replacing or supplementing police with trained mental health professionals to respond to mental health crises. Even here, though, the money to do this could be found, in principle, by a re-ordering of priorities in budgeting. The largest fraction of the Adams County 2025 budget, for example, goes to justice and law enforcement. The courts, the District Attorney’s Office, the prison, the Public Defender Office, security, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Victim Witness program all together account for a whopping 45% of the County’s $73M total budgeted expenses paid out of your property taxes. In addition, 25% of Gettysburg Borough’s budget goes to the local police department.
Wherever you live in PA, you are already paying some of the highest property tax rates in the nation, with a lot of it going for public safety. It is not unreasonable to expect more from our elected leaders to make law enforcement more accountable, more effective, and less discriminatory.
If it is not the cost, what is blocking police reform?
Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Policy Steven Miller explained on a recent Fox News program the rationale for the President to send the military into cities with Democratic mayors when he declared the Democratic Party as “a domestic extremist organization.”
For Trump, it is not about fighting crime. It is about fighting Democrats.
Jeff Colvin has spent his professional career as a research physicist, first at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and then at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories. He lives in Gettysburg part-time and is chair of Gettysburg DFA Government Accountability task force.