AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump paid a visit yesterday to National guardsmen and law enforcement officers who are stationed in Washington, D.C., as part of his mission to crack down on crime. The U.S. attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, pledged harsh punishment for those who are arrested.
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JEANINE PIRRO: I am making sure that we back the blue to the hilt. Every arrest you make, we're going to the longest way to make sure that we charge in those cases.
CHANG: The Trump administration says it has now arrested more than 700 people in the district. NPR criminal justice reporter Meg Anderson is here to tell us what we can and cannot conclude from those numbers. Hi, Meg.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: Hey.
CHANG: Hey. OK, so what more do we know about these arrests so far?
ANDERSON: Yeah, so we're dealing with two separate numbers, one from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and one from the White House. Both have said there may be overlap. We don't know how much overlap there is. MPD says there were about 800 arrests in the first 10 days of this crackdown. Compared to previous years, that is a ramp-up. It's about 25% more than the same period last year, which...
CHANG: Wow.
ANDERSON: ...You know, isn't surprising, given the hundreds of federal agents out on the street.
CHANG: Right. Well, what can you tell us about who is being arrested, exactly?
ANDERSON: Yeah. So first, NPR has asked for a full list of names of the people who have been arrested from both MPD and from the Trump administration. Neither has provided it. So we don't know, you know, who any of these people are, whether they're still in custody. We don't have a full picture of who was arrested for what and who did the arresting. The White House has indicated that about 40% of their arrests have been immigration related. Once you factor out those arrests, they say about half happened in the areas of D.C. with the highest violent crime rates. But without more information, we don't really have any way to independently confirm that.
CHANG: OK, then what can we conclude from all of this arrest data?
ANDERSON: In short, not a lot. Arrests mean arrests. They do not necessarily translate to actual crimes. Typically, only a portion of arrests lead to charges. An even smaller amount lead to convictions. Police experts use the term flooding the zone for this type of law enforcement, and it can lead to arrests simply because officers are out there looking for people to arrest. I spoke to Tahir Duckett about that. He directs the Center for Innovations in Community Safety at Georgetown Law.
TAHIR DUCKETT: You might arrest someone for getting too close to a police officer, and then you could call it assault. You might arrest someone who is protesting but ends up on private property, and then you call it trespassing. So these are all choices, and those choices oftentimes reflect the priority of a law enforcement agency.
ANDERSON: And we have seen that this week. So, you know, many people saw the video of the guy that threw a sandwich at a federal agent.
CHANG: Oh, yeah.
ANDERSON: You know, he's now facing a federal assault charge for that.
CHANG: Assault, for a sandwich - OK. Well, then if arrests are not necessarily an indicator of public safety, Meg, what effect do you think this law enforcement presence could have?
ANDERSON: Yeah, so according to the White House, there have been over 2,000 federal officers involved in this crackdown on recent nights. And that's a big uptick, even in a city that, you know, at least according to data from 2022, had the highest number of police officers per capita in the country. And the White House has said that the National Guard and all these other officers are there to deter violent crime with a visible law enforcement presence. But, you know, police experts told me that officer visibility, like a squad car sitting on a corner - that can deter crime, but it's usually short-lived. And the more the police and the public interact, the greater the risk of excessive force.
CHANG: That is NPR's Meg Anderson. Thank you, Meg.
ANDERSON: You're welcome.
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