President Trump’s announcement Monday that he would federalize local police in Washington, D.C., and call upon hundreds of National Guard members to help combat crime in the nation’s capital drew praise from some Republicans and law enforcement agencies and a sharp rebuke from local elected leaders.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called the plan “unsettling and unprecedented” but indicated that it’s unlikely the District would challenge the president’s plan, as D.C. has limited autonomy with no representation in Congress.

Trump has recently criticized crime in D.C., calling it “ridiculous,” but in reality – crime in D.C. is down, according to statistics posted by the D.C. Metropolitan Police.

Those numbers were analyzed by our investigative team at our sister station, NBC 4 Washington, which found violent crime dropped 26% this year so far, compared to the same period last year. Homicide dropped 12% and assaults with a dangerous weapon dropped 20%. These include non-fatal shootings and stabbings. Carjackings are down 37%.

Two summers ago, D.C. saw a spike, with about five carjackings every day in June 2023. This June, it was about one per day. Half the people arrested in D.C. for carjacking this year are juveniles.

According to D.C. statistics, more juveniles have been arrested this year through the end of June, at about 1% more than the same time last year.

But Gregg Pemberton, of the DC Fraternal Order of Police, argues that recent crime statistics that show a drop in violent crime have been manipulated.

President Donald Trump said Monday that he is deploying National Guardsmen to Washington, D.C. and placing city police under federal control.

“Our members are told on the scene on the front end of these when we go to take the report, lieutenants and captains basically order us to take reports for lesser offenses,” he said in a phone interview with NBC News. “You’re taking a report that the incident occurred, but not properly classifying them.”

He called the D.C. police’s claim that violent crime had indeed dropped 26% since last year “preposterous.”

“We’re going call to call to call for shootings and stabbings,” he said. “It’s as crazy as it’s ever been. We can’t even take a breath. Our detectives are overwhelmed.”

According to our D.C. station, a police commander is under investigation and on paid leave after being accused of making changes to crime statistics in his district.

During his remarks on Monday, President Trump floated the idea that the National Guard could be called up to combat crime in other major U.S. cities like New York or Chicago.

“And if we need to, we’re going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster. We have a mayor there who’s totally incompetent. He’s an incompetent man. And we have an incompetent governor there. Pritzker’s an incompetent,” President Trump told reporters Monday.

A statement from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office read, in part, that: “If President Trump wants to help make Chicago safer, he can start by releasing the funds for anti-violence programs that have been critical to our work to drive down crime and violence. Sending in the National Guard would only serve to destabilize our city and undermine our public safety efforts.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who spoke during a back-to-school event on Monday, rebuked the president’s plans.

Over the weekend, Pritzker, who’s seeking a third term as Illinois governor, mentioned on NBC’s Meet The Press that he wasn’t ruling out a presidential run in 2028.

“It’s clear to me he does not have the legal right or ability to do that. Since I was first elected, I have talked about that, the Nazis in Germany tore down a constitutional republic in just 53 days. It does not take much, frankly, and we seem to have a president who is hellbent on doing just that,” Pritzker said.

The governor said that a law known as the PosseComitatus Act – a law put into place after the Civil War to ensure the military does not act as police against civilians – precludes the president’s actions.

But the Army’s statement Monday said the president is acting under Title 32, which deals with the role of the National Guard and the ability for governors or the president to call up the guard under certain circumstances.

Speaking at a separate event Monday in Illinois, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois told reporters that Trump’s announcement was another distraction.

“It’s a typical move by this president to create chaos and uncertainty, to draw the attention from other issues like Jeffrey Epstein and his papers, draw attention away from the concern of American families that health care is beyond their reach and the cost of living is beyond their reach. He is trying to change the subject,” Durbin said.

A senior law enforcement official told NBC News that the White House authorized as many as 120 FBI agents, mostly from the FBI’s Washington Field Office, to work various shifts on the D.C. streets with the Metropolitan Police Department and other federal agencies this past weekend as part of the initial stages of the federal takeover of the police in D.C.

The Washington Post was the first to report that number.

And now that the takeover has been officially announced, that number is expected to rise throughout the next 30 days.