National Guard troops will soon carry weapons in US capital

__________________

National Guard troops will soon carry weapons in Washington, DC, where President Donald Trump ordered their deployment as part of a crackdown on crime, a US defence official said Friday.

Trump has said Washington was a "crime-infested rat hole" before he sent troops onto its streets last week and said Friday that Chicago and New York -- two more major Democrat-led cities -- are set to receive similar treatment.

"At the direction of the secretary of defense, JTF-DC members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our nation's capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons," the defense official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the Joint Task Force-DC.

The US Army previously said as troops began to arrive that "weapons are available if needed but will remain in the armory."

There are now more than 1,900 National Guard troops in Washington, both from the city as well as the Republican-led states of West Virginia, South Carolina, Ohio, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee, which have also sent forces.

On Friday, Trump said Chicago and New York are also on his list of targets.

"We're going to make our cities very, very safe," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I think Chicago will be our next and then we'll help with New York."

Lowest violent crime in years

The US president also discussed declaring a national emergency to keep troops in Washington for longer than 30 days.

Republican politicians -- led by Trump -- have claimed that the overwhelmingly Democratic US capital is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged.

Data from Washington police, however, showed significant drops in violent crime between 2023 and 2024, though that was coming off a post-pandemic surge.

A Justice Department statement from January said that based on that data, "total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35 percent from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years."

But Trump has accused Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser of "giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures," threatening "bad things" including a total federal takeover of the city if she does not stop doing so.

In addition to the deployment of the National Guard, federal law enforcement personnel -- including Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- have also recently surged their presence on Washington's streets, drawing protests from residents.

The deployment of troops in Washington comes after Trump dispatched the National Guard and Marines to quell unrest in Los Angeles, California, that was sparked by immigration enforcement raids.

That was the first time since 1965 that a US president deployed the National Guard against the wishes of a state governor, who are usually responsible for those forces.