The DC police chief retains command after the agreement with the Trump administration

The Trump administration canceled a prescription replacing the police chief of the Columbia district after a hearing of the emergency court.

Washington DC police chief Pamela Smith will retain control of the force after the city continued the American prosecutor Pam Bondi appointing the chief of the Drug Enfacure Administration (DEA) as “Emergency Police Commissioner” of the district.

The trial asked a judge to cancel the bondi order and prevent the head of DEA from taking the command position in the force.

After the hearing, the Ministry of Justice agreed to withdraw the DEA chief as chief of the emergency police, depositing a new order which made him an intermediary between the administration and the police.

The city’s attorney general, Brian Schwalb, said that his “expectation is the key question with regard to the control and command of our MPD had been resolved”.

Judge Ana Reyes said that by the law that the Trump administration had used to take control of the police service, the mayor of Washington DC Muriel Bowser must follow the White House directives.

But she said that it does not grant total control of the administration of the police forces.

The new order also orders the mayor’s office to cooperate with the application and application of federal immigration linked to “the illegal occupation of public spaces”.

The two parties said they would continue the arguments concerning immigration policy next week.

Friday evening, in a statement, Bondi accused Schwalb of continuing to “oppose our efforts to improve public security” in the city and declared that the administration remains “committed to working in close collaboration with the mayor Bowser”.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would use the application of federal laws to repress crime in Washington.

He has since sent hundreds of members of the National Guard and other federal agents to eliminate homeless camps, execute control points and otherwise strengthen the police, citing a law of the 1970s known as the law on the interior rules which allows him to use MPD to “federal purposes” which he “can judge necessary and appropriate”.

Late Thursday, Bondi wrote in an order that the DEA administrator, Terry Cole, would suppose “all the powers and duties” of the local police chief Pamela Smith. The chief “must receive the approval of the Cole Commissioner before publishing other directives in the MPD”, according to the order.

Almost immediately, mayor Bowser and Schwalb retaliated, saying that the order was “illegal” and saying to Chef Smith that she did not have to follow him.

“If it is carried out, the leap order would upset MPD’s command structure, endangering the security of the public and the agents of the police,” Smith wrote in a declaration filed in the trial on Friday.

“During my almost three decades in the application of laws, I have never seen a single action of the government which would lead to a greater threat to the law and the order than this dangerous directive.”

In the past few days, armored vehicles have lined up near the monuments and other tourist sites, and the drivers have been arrested on a popular night -up corridor. The helicopters of the police forces of the national park system have swept the sky. In total, officials expect 800 soldiers to be deployed in the district, as well as 500 federal law enforcement agents, such as the FBI.

Bowser, a Democrat, said there was no emergency and that Trump’s decision is an “authoritarian push”.

Trump would be the first president to unite the MPD, but the government has already sought to intervene in the DC police.

In 1989, President George HW Bush then provided approximately 200 troops from the National Guard to support local police during a period of chronically high crime involving crack, understanding that they would not patrol the streets.

More recently, the National Guard was sent to protect the Capitol after the attack on January 6, 2021 and, before that, in response to the 2020 demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd.

Bondi told X on Friday that federal officers had made 189 arrests, including 39 on weapon offenses.

Trump said the crime has worsened to Washington DC, but analyzing the BBC verification suggests a different trend.

The violent crimes fell after having culminated in 2023 and 2024, they reached their lowest level in 30 years, according to figures published by the DC police.

They continue to fall, the preliminary data for 2025 suggest.

The violent crime overall fell by 26% this year compared to the same point in 2024, and the flight fell 28%, according to the police service.

Since his entry into office, Trump has also deployed troops of the National Guard to Los Angeles in order to repress protests in the face of the deportation raids by immigration and the application of customs.