Trump’s D.C. takeover has led to more arrests. NPR looks at cases of those swept up

A little more than three weeks ago, President Trump placed the Washington, D.C., police under federal control and put the National Guard on the city’s streets to crush crime and “clean up” the nation’s capital.

Although crime in D.C. was already in decline after spiking during the pandemic, the administration has cast the operation, which also includes a surge of federal law enforcement officers, as a major success.

“We’ve had some incredible results,” Trump said last month while visiting law enforcement officers in southeast D.C. “It’s like a different place. It’s like a different city.”

Trump, who travels in an armored limousine with a huge security detail, also said: “I feel very safe now.”

The White House said on Tuesday that 1,669 people have been arrested since the president’s surge of federal officers into the nation’s capital began on Aug. 7. A sizeable chunk of those arrests are for immigration-related offenses.

The administration has not provided the names or case numbers for any of the individuals who have been arrested or what they’ve been charged with on an individual basis, despite repeated NPR requests for such information.

NPR combed through court records and other data for the first two weeks of Trump’s takeover of D.C. police — Aug. 11 to Aug. 25 — to get a better understanding of who has been swept up in the federal surge for non-immigration offenses and what charges they are facing.

The situation in the nation’s capital is unique.

There is no local district attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. Instead, federal prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office handle both local and federal crimes. The D.C. Attorney General’s Office, meanwhile, prosecutes juvenile crimes as well as certain adult misdemeanors for local crimes.

Prosecutions for local crimes go through the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, while federal cases land in U.S. District Court.

The vast majority of people arrested or formally charged over the Aug. 11 to Aug. 25 timeframe — nearly 1,100 defendants — saw their cases go through superior court.

Lawyers who work in the courthouse say they are swamped. The courtroom where defendants are arraigned has on some days been working past 1 a.m., which attorneys say is almost unheard of.

Of the more than 1,050 defendants whose cases have gone to superior court, prosecutors charged around 20% with felonies: more serious offenses that include drug and gun crimes.

The remaining 80% of the cases were either misdemeanors, warrants, traffic offenses or prosecutors dropping the case.

Attorneys say prosecutors decide not to pursue a case — a move known as “no papering” — for a range of reasons, including weak evidence, a questionable search or finding that the alleged offense is too minor to merit the time and expense of pursuing it.

The percentage of cases the U.S. Attorney’s Office drops at this early stage varies, but in recent months it has been between 10% and 20%, according to lawyers who work in the courthouse.

In the first week of the federal takeover, prosecutors dropped around 17% of cases, according to records reviewed by NPR.

In the second week, that figure fell to less than 1%.

Defense attorneys say that shift is striking since the deficiencies that previously led the U.S. Attorney’s Office to weed out certain cases have not suddenly stopped occurring.

Federal cases

At least 35 cases were filed and unsealed in federal court over the first two weeks of the takeover. More than half of those involved gun charges or gun and drug charges, according to an NPR analysis.

In one case, federal agents pulled a car over after the driver failed to use his turn signal, according to court papers. Officers allegedly found a loaded handgun, 143.5 grams of crack cocaine, plastic baggies and $900 in cash in the car.

The driver, Anthony Grant, had multiple prior convictions for drug and gun-related offenses. A judge has ordered him to remain in custody without bond.

The second most common charge among these cases is assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. Some of those cases involve violence. In one instance, court papers say the defendant struck a federal agent with his car while fleeing an attempted arrest at a gas station.

Several of these cases, however, involve contact with officers that falls far short of that.

One defendant, for example, Sean Charles Dunn, threw a sub sandwich at a federal agent, hitting the officer in the chest.

In another case, the defendant, Scott Pichon, allegedly spit on two South Carolina National Guard troops while riding past them on a scooter outside D.C.’s Union Station.     

Questions of overreach

Despite an aggressive push from law enforcement and prosecutors, some of the cases have unraveled before federal judges and grand juries.

Take the gun case against Torez Riley. Police said in court papers that they found two firearms in Riley’s crossbody satchel when they stopped him in a Trader Joe’s grocery store. Riley had previously been convicted on weapons and drug charges, according to court papers.

At a hearing last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui said Riley appeared to have been singled out by the police because he was a Black man carrying a satchel that looked heavy.

“It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve even seen in my life,” Faruqui said from the bench. “I’m absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office later filed papers to dismiss the case, which the judge granted.

Other cases have run into trouble with grand juries.

It is extremely rare for grand juries to reject charges proposed by prosecutors.

But on multiple occasions in recent weeks grand juries in D.C. have done exactly that, including in the case against the man who hurled a sandwich at a federal agent.

In that instance, prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor after failing to secure an indictment from the grand jury.

NPR’s Luke Garrett and Carrie Johnson contributed to this report.