Andrea Mitchell: DC Police Arresting Fewer People Than “Normal” After Federal Takeover
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Andrea Mitchell complained on this week’s ‘Meet the Press’ roundtable that Trump’s federal takeover of the Washington D.C. police is “performative” because there have been fewer arrests than “normal.” “It’s not clear what they’re doing. They are performative,” she said. “The arrest statistics are not up. They’re in fact lower than the normal police arrests on an average night.”
ANDREA MITCHELL: First of all, it’s expanding, it’s escalating, because now he is also bringing in West Virginia, South Carolina, Missouri, potentially Ohio, other states, red states with Republican legislatures, Republican governors. And so more troops are coming in. And it’s not clear what they’re doing. They are performative. And you see humvees outside Union Station and the Washington Monument, but it seems like more for show. The arrest statistics are not up. They’re in fact lower than the normal police arrests on an average night. This is a city of 700,000 people. Clearly, they are cleaning out and clearing out homeless encampments, and there’s a quality-of-life issue there as well. But whether these are real arrests, and, no, there’s no predicate for an emergency or a crisis in the city.
