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Two weeks into the move to put National Guard troops on the streets of Washington, D.C. have produced two weeks without a single murder and a police department crowing that the crime rate is going down. President Trump has publicly mulled over deploying the Guard in other beleaguered cities, but despite all his bluster, can he put troops in other cities and expect their crime rate to drop as well? Meanwhile, NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch has told U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi that New York can handle the crime problem on its own, while Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker bluntly said the National Guard isn’t wanted in Chicago. National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain why he feels the National Guard works as a deterrent in Washington, but maybe not elsewhere.
Lowry told host Larry Mendte that the Guard lets D.C. police focus on the root cause of much of the crime in the District: “The estimate I’ve seen is about 500 young guys responsible for about 60 or 70% of the gun crime. You’ve got to go after them, and you put those guys behind bars, and you make these neighborhoods safer, and you get less violent crime. I do think the numbers are encouraging in D.C. I do think there’s an initial effect here, or just everyone’s just kind of keeping their head down, right? They’ve heard Trump’s coming, they’ve seen the guys on the streets or they’ve seen them on social media or on TV. I don’t know whether that’s a long-term effect, but it’s better than the alternative.”
Lowry does point out one big legal reason why Trump’s National Guard success may not even begin to be replicated in other cities: “(In) D.C., the President of the United States can just take over the police department, which is what they’ve done… that’s not going to happen in Chicago or Baltimore… and the feds could really help, but they’re gonna have a totally rejectionist attitude.”
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