Some National Guard members have started carrying their service-issued weapons around the nation’s capital.
“Starting the late evening of August 24, 2025, JTF- DC (Joint Task Force – DC) service members began carrying their service-issued weapon,” the Guard said in a statement late Sunday.
“Task force personnel operate under the established Rules for the Use of Force, which allow the use of force only as a last resort and solely in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm,” the Guard added.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo late last week authorizing National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C., to carry weapons if their mission requires it.
The memo, according to one official, was addressed to the chief of the National Guard Bureau and the Secretary of the Army.
Roughly 2,300 Guard troops have been deployed in Washington and seen in low-crime tourist areas. Soldiers and airmen assigned to a beautification task force have conducted site surveys to begin community restoration projects over the next several days.
Now that some are armed, it is unclear whether their tasks will expand to security patrols in neighborhoods that struggle with crime.
More than 900 members of the District of Columbia National Guard have been deployed, along with about 1,300 Guard members coming from Republican-led states, including Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Ohio.
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President Donald Trump early Friday threatened a full “federal takeover” of Washington and accused D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser of providing “inaccurate crime figures.”
“Washington, D.C. is SAFE AGAIN!” Trump wrote on his Truth social. “Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City! Washington D.C. will soon be great again!!!”
Bowser has shared data showing that violent crime has decreased in the city since a rise in 2023.
“We’re at a 30-year violent-crime low. We’re not satisfied. We haven’t taken our foot off the gas, and we continue to look for ways to make our city safer,” Bowser said last week.
Crime has been down across the board in D.C., with 20-year homicide trends at their lowest point since the 2020 pandemic, according to the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department.
Homicide rates last year were almost twice as high as 2012, when the nation’s capital experienced a 50-year low in the number of homicides per capita. But those rates are down more than 68% since the record highs of the 1990s, from about 80 homicides per 100,000 residents to about 25 homicides per 100,000 residents, FBI crime data shows.
The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Police Department has falsified its data. The probe, led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., came after Trump’s administration federalized the city’s police force and ordered the National Guard deployment.
In a visit to Guard personnel Thursday, Trump suggested the military personnel would be playing a larger role in law enforcement in the city. He also suggested the troops could stay for six months or longer.
“You do the job on safety, and I’ll get this place fixed up physically, and we’re going to be so proud of it at the end of six months,” he told law enforcement and troops who had gathered to hear him speak.
Retired Maj. Gen. Randy Manner, who served as vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, told Military Times this month that the crime situation in Washington falls far below “any emergency criteria that has ever been used” to deploy the Guard during or after his 35-year career.
The cost for a deployment of about 2,000 Guard soldiers typically averages around $20 million per month, Manner said, and could negatively impact readiness by taking money away from drills and individual training.
The Army did not provide cost estimates for the deployment.
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