Research from a Washington, D.C., think tank shows that President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard did not make the city more safe.
Thousands of soldiers were deployed to the nation’s capital last August under the president’s “Make D.C. Safe and Beautiful” initiative.
However, a May study from the Niskanen Center shows that troops did not drive down crime but rather accelerated a downward trend that already existed due to local policing.
“It did not follow MPD’s [Metropolitan Police Department’s] existing deployment patterns. Instead, Guard personnel were spread across tourist corridors, transit hubs such as Union Station, federal buildings, monuments, parks, and public spaces. They were often armed and could detain individuals, but they had no power to arrest; police retained that authority,” the study says of the deployment.
The center emphasized the surge in law enforcement “was not hotspot policing.”
“It was not even conventional policing,” the study continues. “It was a large, sudden, and independently operated surge in uniformed presence, uninformed by crime data and concentrated instead in the spaces where the public life of the city happens.”
Researchers said before soldiers’ deployment there were roughly 0.10 fewer crime incidents weekly per neighborhood block. MPD and the mayor’s office did not return requests for comment regarding the study.
However, a local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner (ANC) said there are no signs of improvement with the presence of soldiers.
“As an ANC I’ve heard from a lot of neighbors that the National Guard’s presence patrolling the streets makes them feel uncomfortable,” Commissioner of ANC1B07 Matthew Holden told The Informer. It’s unclear what in particular their purpose is other than to make the administration look tough and there is no local oversight over their presence.”
The Northwest resident noted he’s seen recent challenges with crime and MPD.
“This past weekend in the U Street corridor, there was a shooting and multiple stabbings,” he continued. “If the administration cared about public safety in D.C., they would work with the District Government and MPD to find actual solutions to our city’s safety issues.”
Other Washingtonians agree.
Native Washingtonian John-Paul Perotta said the soldiers’ presence makes it feel like “you’re living under occupation” noting that there hasn’t been any “measurable improvement” regarding crime due to their proximity.
Joy Masha said the National Guard patrolling community streets is poor for her wellbeing.
“I don’t feel safer with National Guard troops stationed on every corner of my neighborhood. I feel anxious. Before I see the sun on my way to work, I see soldiers and guns,” Joy Masha told the Informer. “It feels less like protection and more like living inside a scene from a war movie where ordinary residents have become background characters in a conflict we never asked for. The question I keep asking myself is: ‘How did our neighborhood get here?’”
Nation Guard in High-Visibility Public Spaces, a Costly Deployment
In the weeks following the National Guard’s deployment, statistics show crime rates settling at around 0.24 incidents below baseline for the remainder of 2025.
The study says the National Guard’s presence deterred opportunistic property offending, exactly the category of crime most sensitive to visible, high-presence enforcement on the street but flagged that violent crime was “unmoved.”
“The National Guard was deployed primarily in high-visibility public spaces, exactly the locations where opportunistic property crime tends to occur and where visible deterrence is most likely to be effective. Violent crime is more deeply rooted in interpersonal dynamics, social network conflicts, and the structural conditions of high-poverty neighborhoods,” researchers wrote. “A uniformed presence in tourist corridors and transit hubs is unlikely to interrupt a dispute between individuals with preexisting ties on their own turf. The Guard’s footprint was simply misaligned with the geography of violence.”
National Guard deployment costs nearly $1.65 million per day. The Guard is currently on track to spend more than $602 million annually on the D.C. deployment alone, meanwhile the approved operating budget for local police sits at $599 million, according to Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim (D) said the Trump administration’s deployment has “no clear strategy, no evidence of effectiveness, and no end in sight.”
“If this administration was truly prioritizing the safety of our communities, it’d allow the National Guard to instead focus on their core military responsibilities and work together with Congress to get local law enforcement and leaders in D.C. the funding and resources that they need from the federal government,” he added in a statement.
‘Headcount is Not What Is Doing the Work’
The study noted that a decline in crime across the city over the past three years, coincides with a “striking reduction” in the MPD workforce.
MPD went from approximately 4,000 officers in 2013 to 3,144, representing a loss of more than 660 officers compared with prepandemic staffing levels. The study says 14% of the force is also now assigned to desk duties rather than in the field.
“As the city shed officers between 2021-2024, crime surged and then receded, without any corresponding recovery in police staffing,” researchers wrote.
They said MPD increased its impact by strategically placing officers.
“The city did not redeploy a shrinking force toward its most dangerous neighborhoods. It pulled back from them. And yet crime fell anyway. That paradox reframes the policy question entirely. If crime can fall while officer counts are declining, and while officers are being pulled back from the highest crime neighborhoods, then headcount is not what is doing the work,” the study says.
“What matters is how those officers are used: whether they are in the places where crime actually clusters, at the times when it peaks, and whether their energy is concentrated on focused enforcement rather than spread thin across routine patrols. Headcount is what gets debated in budget hearings. Presence, deployment, and strategy are what actually move crime,” the study concluded.
