Report: National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. shows limited impact on crime

Thousands of members of the National Guard have been deployed by Donald Trump onto the streets of Washington, D.C. – but appear to be stopping little crime, according to a report.

Trump billed the huge deployment in August 2025 as an effort to tackle “out of control” crime in the city. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office later estimated that the troop rollout had already cost $223 million by the end of 2025.

However, according to Reuters, just 1.3 per cent of the criminal cases filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which handles most of the city’s criminal prosecutions, mention the National Guard’s soldiers.

“It’s like they brought people here from all across the country, just to be here,” Rev. Norman Nixon, the pastor at the Union Temple Baptist Church, told the outlet. “And they harass people a lot more than they are actually doing police work,” he alleged.

An analysis of every available charging document filed at the court by Reuters found that the National Guard’s soldiers, who have been deputized as U.S. Marshals, responded mostly to whiter and wealthier neighborhoods in the city.

The outlet also found no references to soldiers conducting law enforcement in areas where around 82 percent of the city's 859 murders occurred over the past five years.

Only 217 criminal cases in Washington D.C mentioned the National Guard. In 62 of those cases, soldiers had stopped people suspected of committing crime single-handedly - often for cases involving minor crimes, such as shoplifting.

A spokesperson for the White House told the outlet that Trump had “driven down crime, beautified the city and improved quality of life for countless individuals,” when asked by the outlet about the soldiers' work.

Typically, the National Guard is rolled out to respond to major crises, such as riots, or to provide security at major events.

Trump announced the deployment of the National Guard after declaring a “public safety emergency” in August 2025.

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness,” he told reporters, claiming that the city had been “taken over by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals.”

However, prior to the National Guard’s deployment in Washington, D.C., the murder rate in the city had actually fallen from 274 in 2023 to 187 in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. That number fell again to 127 in 2025.

Meanwhile, violent crime actually rose by 4 percent from 2025 to 2026 despite the National Guard’s deployment, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.

Maintaining the National Guard’s deployment in Washington, D.C. will cost an additional $1.4 billion through to the end of Trump’s term, according to information provided to Congress and reviewed by The Washington Post. That figure covers the period spanning from October 2026 until January 2029.

The Independent has contacted the National Guard and the White House for comment.