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President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the White House on Thursday to make Washington, D.C., “safe and beautiful.”
The order establishes the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force to increase the city’s safety, including the recruitment of police officers.
“The task force is directed to: Surge law enforcement officers in public areas and strictly enforce quality-of-life laws in public areas like drug use, unpermitted demonstrations, vandalism, and public intoxication,” according to a White House fact sheet released on Thursday.
Other plans include efforts to, “Maximize immigration enforcement to apprehend and deport dangerous illegal aliens, including monitoring D.C.’s cooperation with federal immigration authorities,” to, “Help D.C.’s forensic crime laboratory get accreditation,” and, “Provide assistance to the D.C. Police Department in recruiting and retaining officers and boosting capabilities.”
The task force is charged with several critical responsibilities, including deploying more law enforcement officers in public spaces and strictly enforcing quality-of-life laws related to drug use, unpermitted demonstrations, vandalism and public intoxication.
Beyond crime reduction, the order seeks to restore and beautify Washington, D.C., making it a symbol of pride for the American people. This initiative includes revitalizing federal buildings, monuments, statues, memorials, parks and roadways, as well as removing graffiti and ensuring cleanliness in public spaces. The National Park Service will be tasked with swiftly clearing homeless encampments and removing graffiti from federal lands.
Despite claims of modest decreases in crime in 2024, the numbers remain significantly higher than previous years, with violent crime increasing by 39 percent and property crime by 24 percent in 2023. That same year saw the highest homicide rate in the District since 1997, according to the fact sheet. The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is severely understaffed, with fewer than 3,500 officers, despite needing at least 4,000 to effectively maintain public safety.
On his first visit to the capital since leaving office in 2021, Trump lamented “the filth and decay” that had overtaken the city in his absence. He later vowed that his administration would “take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime, but rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world.”