he White House has backed off plans for a full takeover of the D.C. police force and will allow for the city’s police chief to remain in charge after a judge indicated they would block the move.
President Donald Trump this week invoked emergency powers to take control of the D.C. police department and call in the National Guard to a city that he claimed is overrun by "bloodshed, bedlam and squalor"—a claim that is disputed by experts.
As part of the federal takeover, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Drug and Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole as “Emergency Police Commissioner,” a move that would have given the White House extraordinary powers over policing.
The city’s Attorney General Brian Schwalb filed a lawsuit calling for an emergency restraining order to block the move, accusing the Trump Administration of implementing a “hostile takeover” of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) that would lead to “imminent, irreparable harm”.
“In my nearly three decades in law enforcement, I have never seen a single government action that would cause a greater threat to law and order than this dangerous directive,” Smith wrote in the lawsuit
Judge Ana Reyes said in a Friday hearing that, according to the Home Rule Act, the Department of Justice needed to rewrite the section of the executive order that placed Cole in charge, and that he needed to go through the city’s mayor. Reyes stopped short of issuing a restraining order, but indicated that if the DOJ did not rewrite the section, she would.
“The statute [The Home Rule Act] would have no meaning at all if the president could just say ‘we’re taking over your police department,’” Reyes said.
