President Donald Trump’s Washington, DC, police takeover is proving once and for all that our cities must give up their soft-on-crime policies — and display more compassion for victims than for criminals.
Even if the criminals are kids.
In a backward effort to promote “equity,” progressive lawmakers in Washington and elsewhere have relieved teens of consequences for almost any crime they may commit.
But all it’s done is tell lawbreakers they won’t be held accountable for their antisocial actions.
By sending in the National Guard, Trump is bringing common sense back to crime fighting and consequences back for those who commit crimes, including minors.
If their parents aren’t going to make teens control their impulses, law enforcement must.
The same progressives who insist every child in America should be free to have an abortion or change their sex have nothing to say to the kids who need them most: urban teens falling into lives of crime and mayhem.
It’s neither caring nor kind to let kids run wild with no guidance, no guardrails, and few consequences to deter damaging behavior.
“A family court rehabilitation program of yoga and ice cream socials for hardened repeat offenders just doesn’t cut it,” US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro said Tuesday.
She called for an end to local laws that threw out mandatory minimum sentences for young offenders and otherwise coddle them.
In DC, 56% of all carjackings since 2023 were committed by juveniles, some as young as 12.
That’s had deadly consequences: In 2021, two girls aged 13 and 15 murdered a DC Uber driver during a carjacking. They were offered plea deals.
Teens run wild through DC’s Navy Yard, which set a juvenile curfew after a boy shot a stolen gun at a group of other kids.
The MPD claims that crime is decreasing in DC, as do leftist pundits who just want to see Trump’s policies fail — but at the Navy Yard, violent crime is up, along with homicide, robbery and car theft.
Meanwhile in New York City, juveniles are committing increasing numbers of robberies, assaults and shootings — and other minors are often the victims.
NYC saw an increase in arrests of minors for those offenses in 2024, as well as record highs of minor victims: 6,600 assaults and 1,500 robberies — while the state’s Raise the Age laws shielded the young perpetrators from criminal prosecution.
Is it equitable to allow teens to commit violent crimes against each other without punishment?
Pirro is right: Kids who commit serious crimes must be taken seriously. The only way to protect society from their dangerous actions is to hold them accountable.
We used to know this.
Children and teens need limits. They need to know adults are paying attention to them and setting boundaries on their recklessness.
We do teens no favors by letting them believe feral behavior can be tolerated — and we imperil society by letting these ruffians run riot in our cities.
Trump is making it clear he won’t stand for it, taking federal control of DC’s Metro Police Department and adding 800 National Guard troops and 500 federal law enforcement agents to beef up patrols.
America’s most prominent cities have bought into terrible policies that go easy on young criminals, and the kids know it.
Why do our cities care more about protecting wrongdoers from consequences than about protecting the rest of us?
Keyboard warriors are complaining that Trump’s MPD takeover is nothing but “political theater,” that DC’s sky-high homicide rate — 27.3 per 100,000 residents in 2024, fourth highest in the nation — isn’t as bad as it was the year before.
They seem to think if DC isn’t literally exploding like Fallujah everything’s totally fine.
Trump knows the nation’s capital must be a showplace, a testament to our role in world affairs and our global dominance.
Democratic Party leaders don’t seem to care at all about that, or about the sad state of our murderous youth.
They have abandoned them by implementing policies that stop them from taking responsibility for their actions — or even realizing that they should.
If the law won’t hold them to account, if their parents won’t guide them, if kids keep hearing that their circumstances and not their choices are to blame for their bad behavior, then a leader must step in and take charge.
Trump is acting to save America’s youth from themselves — and in doing so, he’ll save America’s cities, too.
Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.
