What Trump's takeover of the D.C. police means for fighting crime

Here & Now Anytime

NPR

News

4.1 • 953 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Trump put Washington, D.C. police under federal control, vowing to fight crime in the country’s capital. What does the move mean for mayors across the country as they try to keep their cities safe? Van Johnson, president of the African American Mayors Association, joins us.

And, despite fears around crime, data shows that violent crime and property crime rates fell to a 20-year low in 2024. Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, explains more about the data.

Then, as electric vehicle sales flatten, Ford announced a line of smaller, cheaper electric vehicles. Roben Farzad, host of the podcast "Full Disclosure," details the rollout.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for here and now anytime comes from MathWorks,
0:03.3	creator of MATLAB and Simulink software
0:06.0	for technical computing and model-based design.
0:09.0	MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery
0:11.8	in engineering and science.
0:13.6	Learn more at MathWorks.com.
0:16.0	WBUR Podcasts, Boston.
0:24.9	And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C.
0:27.8	And we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.
0:31.9	President Trump sent federal troops to beautify the streets of Washington, D.C.
0:37.1	And he threatened to do the same elsewhere, even though crime is already falling across the
0:41.7	country.
0:42.9	It's got some mayors wondering, is my city next?
0:59.8	Today's Tuesday, August 12th, and this is here and now anytime from NPR and WBUR.
1:00.9	I'm Chris Bentley.
1:12.6	Today on the show, you wouldn't know it from President Trump's dark warnings about crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor yesterday. But the U.S. is experiencing an historic decline in violent crime.
1:17.6	In 2025, the preliminary data points to about a 20% decline so far this year.
1:24.6	We're about to set the record for the third straight year.
1:34.2	We'll look at some of the reasons why. Also, Ford says it'll start making electric pickups for just $30,000 as part of a major revamp of some assembly lines. But is it too late to compete
1:41.8	with automakers in China? That's coming up in about 15 minutes.
1:46.4	Before we get to that, though, National Guard troops reported to the armory in Washington, D.C.
1:51.7	this morning, a day after President Trump announced he'd send them there to bring down crime
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.