By Black Star News
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
The Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is condemning Donald Trump’s executive order claiming that there is a crime emergency in Washington DC. As the LDF points out crime is at a 30 year low—according to the US Justice Department.
The Legal Defense Fund’s Associate Director-Counsel Todd A. Cox issued the following statement:
“President Trump is advancing a fictional story of a city that is overwhelming Black (nearly 45% of the D.C. population) beset by crime to justify the deployment of National Guard resources and to advance lawless policing. But the truth is that crime in D.C. has reached historic lows. This distortion is taken directly from the authoritarian playbook and is intended to create fear of crime to justify police violence and expanded police enforcement. It reflects the Trump administration’s dehumanization of people it considers enemies or undesirable, such as unhoused people, and its concerted desire to use police to forcefully remove these people from the public eye.
“The show of force through the deployment of National Guard units and the takeover of D.C. Metro Police is an affront to safety that will instead embolden law enforcement officers to operate with unchecked violence. It goes against the will of the residents of D.C. who democratically and lawfully elected a mayor and city council representatives to make decisions regarding safety for their District. The government’s action today threatens individuals who are unhoused and residents in vulnerable, aggressively and disparately police neighborhoods that will likely be profiled. It also underscores the need for D.C. statehood to empower D.C. residents, who pay taxes and are equal contributors to the U.S. economy as other U.S. residents, to vote for representatives who can protect their interests.
“President Trump desires an America where he and police are above the law. But he and law enforcement officers are bound by the U.S. Constitution and other laws and will be held to account.”
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