DC mayor to work with Trump: We want to 'drive down crime'

Fox News alert, President Trump meant what he said to the nation at this hour yesterday. And now it is all happening. Brand new video into Fox News. He took action to crush violent crime to a new level that goes today with the arrival, as you see in the center of your screen, and this brand new video, National Guard troops arriving to our nation's capital after our commander in chief ordered them to stand alongside the city's law enforcement.

The District of Columbia's police force is now under federal control. I'm Harris Faulkner. You are in the Faulkner focus. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the mission.

We're going to work right alongside our law enforcement partners as force multipliers. This is what the American people voted for. If our capital city is a mess, if we can't control our capital city, then what does the rest of the country look like?

And what signals does the rest of the country take from that?

Democrats are shocked over this. D.C.'s police union is backing President Trump. The chairman of that union said, we stand with the president and recognizing that Washington, D.C. cannot continue on this trajectory. Crime is out of control and our officers are stretched beyond their limits. And keeping the victims of D.C.'s outbreak of violence front and center, the mom of a

congressional intern who was killed in crossfire of a drive-by shooting in D.C.

Watch.

When I heard the news today, and he mentioned my son, not by name, and mentioned the others who have been victims of violent crime, I was so happy. Things will change so other people are safe when they go visit D.C. or work in D.C.

President Trump was 100% spot on with what he said.

Per usual, Democrats are united against President Trump's actions to fix what the Dems broke.

What the president did this morning was political theater. His idea in federalizing the police force of DC ignores the reality. They are making dramatic progress in reducing violent crime in DC. This looks to me like an

emergency which is manufactured. This action today is unsettling and unprecedented. Well the Dems have it right in one way about theater. It's living like a horror film. Justice correspondent David Spunt is in Washington, D.C. So, David, how is all of this laying out, this push against the outbreak of violent crime?

Hi, Hara. It's good to be with you. We know right now Attorney General Pam Bondi and her senior team meeting with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and the police chief Pamela Smith. Now this is the first time the DC Police Department has been under direct DOJ control.

When you have the DOJ and President Trump driving behind this mission, we are going to clean up Washington, DC.

And we're going to do it the right way, the lawful way, and we're going to make sure Washington, D.C. is safe. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for D.C. says the no-cash bail policy, around for decades, that allows people out of custody based on risk assessment, is the chief problem, instead of actually paying money to get out on bail or bond. Violent crime in the nation's capital, down 26 percent since last year, according to the city's own statistics online but one of those behind the statistics reportedly put on leave earlier this year over allegations of fudging some numbers. Whether crime is up or down you know they want to pat themselves on the back and say gee it's great it's not as bad

as it used to be it is horrific Harris, according to the DC Home Rule Charter, the police department is under DOJ control, but only for 30 days. That could, though, be extended if the Senate and House enact into law a resolution authorizing such an extension. DC Muriel Bowser not given a heads-up about the move by the Trump administration before the president made the announcement and said this of people that are concerned about the president's ability to have the police department controlled

by the DOJ.

If people are concerned about a president's ability to have the MPD police department

be responsive to the Department of Justice, the time to address that is when we're talking about statehood for D.C.

Harris, I watched Bowser's entire news conference yesterday. Clearly, she seemed frustrated by the move, but her overall attitude was there's not much that she can do, given the Home Rule charter language. She said overall, even though she wasn't consulted, she was not surprised. And she said basically there's nothing that she can do, because it's written in black and white, Harris.

Yeah, it'll be interesting. I mean, I have never interviewed her. I did watch that conference, as well as you did. It'll be interesting to see where she falls on things as the president begins to clean it up in her district. I mean, it's hard to talk against success and she's kind of on the fence it would seem right now Good to see you David. Thank you, Phil Holloway former assistant district attorney former police officer also an advisor to the

Oconee County, Georgia Sheriff's Department and Chris Wecker former assistant FBI director gentlemen It is great to have you both look US Attorney U.S. Attorney for D.C. Janine Pirro said, crime is horrific. I said, it must feel like the people there are living and starring in a horror film that they want to end. Then you bring in President Trump's idea. Chris, I want to talk to you from the FBI perspective

of this kind of support against violent crime.

Well, yeah, let's start with the fact that there are parts of D.C. that are an absolute war zone. Now, they can talk about reduced crime, you know, in the last year. I take that with a healthy dose of skepticism, given that we know one, at least one police commander has been cooking the books. And that's not terribly unusual, unfortunately.

Some departments have learned how to game the system. Now, also, you have to look at per capita crime, crime per 100,000 residents versus the raw number of crimes committed. And you also have to look at the fact that they've been — the police have been backed off on the streets. They're not — you know, they're not willing to make the arrests in some cases,

and witness the police union backing these measures 100 percent. So I will, you can mark my words, crime will go down. With the National Guard out on the street as a visible deterrent, with federal agents out there working next to local police officers, they will get the worst of the worst off the street and they will deter crime.

And you will see crime go down in the off the street and they will deter crime and you will see crime go down in the next 30 days and the extensions because mainly they will get the worst of the worst incarcerated with some aggressive prosecution from Jeanine Pirro.

And I appreciated the detail on the way that Secretary of Defense Pete Hexeth was talking about the mission because he said, look, we are force multipliers. So what they're doing is they're coming in and they're just going to do what works with more people. I mean, that can only make things better. Phil, I'm coming right to you.

I want to get to this for you to respond to. President Trump is also floating the idea that he could take action, similar action, in other major cities across America.

Let's watch. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this.

And this will go further. I'm going to look at New York in a little while.

And if we need to, we're going to do the same thing in Chicago.

Talk to me, Phil, about the law and what the president seeks to do potentially.

Well, great to be with you, Harris. Listen, the president is not wrong. All of these cities do have very significant crime problems. And there's lots that he can do in the District of Columbia, because, of course, that is a federal jurisdiction. New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, other places are not federal jurisdictions, but there are federal assets in place. We already see in the context of immigration enforcement that federal authorities are going out into the communities and they are making a difference. So I don't think the president

can outright federalize law enforcement per se in a city like Atlanta, where I'm sitting, but there are a lot of things the federal government can do, including we can fix how crime statistics are reported. That's a big part of this problem. I've been in the criminal justice system for almost 40 years now. And I can tell you the dirty secret about crime reporting is that it's based on the honor system. And so often these bureaucrats and even politicians have no honor, Harris. They cook the books. They take things

like a, a mugging or an armed robbery out on the streets and they will call it a theft. Or if someone gets shot at a domestic violence incident, they call it a domestic violence incident rather than a aggravated assault or even an attempted murder. So it's all in how these politicians and these bureaucrats attempt to make themselves look better so that they can qualify for maybe federal grants or even just get votes from the voters. It's all a big scam and it needs to change and we need some federal guidelines, I think, in place to guarantee that law enforcement reports crime statistics properly so that

American citizens can know what's going on in these cities.

Yeah, so it's interesting. The law enforcement reporting then is also dictated, I would think in part, Chris, by their higher ups, the people who are truly politicians in the mayor's office, so on and so forth. I mean, we would need all of the details to point some fingers but it's not just coming out of nowhere and the collateral damage of all of that is the people living the truth of what crime really feels like

and is in the streets. Your last quick thought. Yeah police departments are under tremendous pressure to reduce crime that's their job and they that that results in what was just mentioned by Phil, is they essentially cook the books. This has been the dirty secret for quite a while now. The other problem is that many of the systems, the blue cities, haven't updated their systems under the new system, which is called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, NIBRS. And so they're estimating

their criminal numbers based on earlier numbers, so they can put the numbers wherever they want to put them. The bottom line is—and this has been proven from the 90s, when—during the crack epidemic, when crime was off the charts, much like today—is proactive policing and putting the worst of the worst in jail and having zero-tolerance policies in both arrests and prosecutions will reduce crime, particularly

those recidivist offenders that are responsible for a large proportion of those crimes. Within 30, 60 days in D.C., they'll be put away.

And a full stop. Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you.

Great to have you both.

Thank you, Harris. Great to be here.

We want to go to breaking news now. Thank you, Harris. Great to be here. Metropolitan Police Department working side by side with our federal partners in order to enforce the efforts that we need around the city.

Can you tell us what the chain of command is now?

What does that mean?

Well, is it Pam Bondi speaking to the mayor of PDU or how does this work?

So the executive order is clear. The president has requested MPD services and our home rule charter outlines the process. The president

designated Attorney General Bondi as his proxy to request services through me.

But does the Attorney General have the authority to implement changes at MPD or just request changes?

The executive order is pretty clear and so is the law. The president has the authority by virtue of the statute to request services. Our organizational chart, how we do business, how we fund the police, how we make changes, none of that has changed.

So you retain firing, firing? Yes.

Mayor Badger, you've had some time to think about it since yesterday. How do you sum up

how this has played out where you didn't know about this before it

was announced? What I'm focused on is the federal surge and how to make the most of the additional officer support that we have. We have the best in the business and MPD and Chief Pamela Smith to lead that effort and to make sure that the men and women who are coming from federal law enforcement are being well used in that if there's National Guard here that they're being well used and all in an effort to drive down crime.

So how how we got here or what the what we think about the

circumstances right now, we have more police and we want to make sure we're

using them. Are you concerned at all that some of the police that are out there are FBI agents who were assigned to offices who are now patrolling the

streets at night? Um, I'm gonna rely on the police chief to work with her counterparts to make sure people are being deployed in a useful way.

Do you have a plan for the nature of the relationship between the chief and the military during this time?

It's going to be, she's going to work hand in hand with the people that the president

has designated. Just a couple more.

Chief, we hear in some other jurisdictions the National Guard are made up primarily of

police and law enforcement.

Do we know the makeup of the D.C.

I wouldn't be able to say that offhand. I think they come from all backgrounds.

Are there a lot of law enforcement people actually?

There are a number of Metropolitan Police Department and officers from of law enforcement. There are actually there are a number of Metropolitan Police Department and officers from other law enforcement outfits, firefighters and others who make up our D.C. National Guard because that's who makes up our city. And does the National Guard have the power to make arrests on a day-to-day basis? How does that work? No, the National Guard is not law enforcement and so as the chief said we regularly because we what we do in our city work with the National Guard and we'll do the same.

That they will coordinate through the Metropolitan Police Department for any services that they're providing during this time.

All right.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hey, everyone.

I'm Emily Campagno. Catch me and my co-hosts, Harris Faulkner and Kaylee McEnany on Outnumbered every weekday at 12 p.m. Eastern, or set your DVR. Also, don't forget to subscribe Also, don't forget to subscribe to the Fox News YouTube page for daily highlights.