Trump’s Federal Policing Makes Us Less Safe

In my 50-some years of community and political ministry, and organizing that resisted Boston’s test with “stop and frisk” after the hoax of Charles Stuart murdering his wife and blaming it on a Black man, I thought I had seen it all. Then, when Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former DOGE worker and software engineer known online as “Big Balls,” was assaulted in Dupont Circle in what was reportedly a carjacking incident, it was deja vu of Boston and the neighborhood where I lived, Roxbury, being turned upside down again. I thought I had already seen the worst of white reaction to Blackness, but again I was wrong. Trump and the MAGA/white supremacist chorus used the Coristine incident as justification for a city gone wild that needed to be brought under control.

I listened to all the political hyperbole on the airwaves and in social media, which I had heard before. It was another version, I thought, of Raymond Flynn, Mayor of Boston during the Charles Stuart hoax, declaring that it was a terrible night in Boston and turning loose the police on the Black community and advancing tactics like ‘stop and frisk.’ I listened and heard once again words and statements that would justify the Trump/MAGA/Authoritarian regime’s initiatives to demonstrate to his white base that at all cost white life will be protected, and the Black culprits brought into line. It seems that everyone has conveniently forgotten the feigned genesis that was used to justify this attack upon our city, on our democracy, home rule in DC, and civilian government.

I watched and listened to the legal battle that unfolded between the Trump Administration and the DC Attorney General about who would be in charge of this new municipal/federal police force. The DC attorney general took the matter to court, and it was determined that the DC Chief of Police would remain in charge – for now. Still, in compromise, the DC government bowed to the anti-sanctuary sentiments dictated by the Trump regime. Trump talked about how dangerous DC was, and that it is plagued with crime, that visitors are in danger for their lives, that the parks need to be cleaned up from homeless encampments, Confederate statues needed to be replaced, and the cracked marble on monuments need to be repaired.

Trump stressed the dangers and disrepair of Washington, DC. Challenged the Mayor, Muriel Bowser, in her management of the city, and recently has threatened to erase home-rule altogether and completely “federalize” the city. Mayor Bowser first attempted to appease the Trump/MAGA/White Supremacist regime as it came to power. She dismantled “Black Lives Matter Plaza” that was dedicated on 16th Street, NW leading up to the White House created after the murder of George Floyd and Trump’s upside-down bible photo-op in front of the Episcopal church sitting on the edge of Lafayette Square. But there would be no appeasement, and the mayor proved how out of step she was in this historical moment by citing crime statistics and the facts about crime rates being down. The Trump/MAGA/White Supremacist regime could care less about crime statistics but offered what happened to “Big Balls” as an example of a threat to all white people. Trump cited the city’s mismanagement and the dangers of living here.

I am someone who can admit to the dangers of DC today, but not in the terms presented by Trump and his band of parrots. DC is a dangerous place today and it is because of DC’s occupation by federal law enforcement and troops. What I have seen and experienced over the last week has been marked and unmarked cars with masked and unmasked personnel. I have seen their awkwardness and discomfort interacting with the people of DC. What I have seen and experienced during this brief time has been many different kinds of law enforcement agencies, stopping people for all kinds of concocted offenses. While driving with a friend a few nights ago we drove past at least ten police cars from various agencies including Secret Service with a Black man held and handcuffed standing behind a car. He was surrounded by different kinds of cops. I turned the car around, parked it, got out, and went over to question the police on what they were doing. A DC cop who seemed to decide that he was going to be my liaison explained that the man was stopped for driving with tinted windows. The handcuffed man explained and appealed to me that his grandmother who was seated in the passenger side of the car needed to get home safely. He continued, that he had taken her to dinner and she needed to get home if he was being arrested. The incident drew more than 10 cops. The man eventually was arrested for driving with tinted windows. The DC lieutenant who interfaced with me assured me that he would get the man’s grandmother home.

Another incident that I witnessed took place a few days later on a Saturday. Many of us have been running a picket line supporting the boycott of Target in conjunction with the national campaign. The Target store is located in an area with a concentration of immigrants. It is the Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan neighborhood in the city. We have been on the picket line for months, and on 14th Street, NW the street has always been busy with shoppers of diverse populations. Usually, the street is lined with grassroots vendors selling all kinds of wares and goods. The immigrant community has shopped there, immigrant vendors sell there, and the street has always been crowded with tents and tables laden with whatever people were selling.

Over the course of our time picketing Target, and in the last few weeks, we have watched the vendors disappear. We have seen the street become quieter, with shoppers diminishing. But on this particular Saturday, as the Target picket line was disbanding, the DC police stopped a Latino motorcyclist, supposedly for having the tags on his motorcycle turned upward and illegally parking. It so happened that I knew one of the DC cops and went over to talk to him. He assured me that he was not going to check the immigrant status of the individual. I thanked him for that but admonished the DC police for harassing the man in the first place. The cop I knew told me that he was under strict orders to stop people for reasons they wouldn’t normally stop them for. I told him that this was a sad state of affairs, and he agreed. Just then, Homeland Security arrived, accompanied by other agencies, all wearing brown uniforms, as if they were patrolling in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was then, when those federal law enforcement entities showed up, that the crowd that had been watching the encounter became more vocal, agitated, and unified in their demands. With cellphone cameras in hand, people began to yell, “get the fuck out of here”, “nobody wants you here”, “leave hard-working people alone,” and “get the fuck out of DC!”

The crowd of onlookers quickly swelled from 10-20 to more than 100 people. They were white, Black, Latino, male, female, youn,g and old. It was everybody. And what I realized, as I caught the image of a federal agent in a Brown stormtrooper uniform staring threateningly at the crowd with his hand on his hip near his gun, his facial expression declaring ‘I dare you’ was the real threat to residents of DC. As I looked at this anonymous agent with his blue eyes and hostile stare and presence, I realized that he was hoping and wanting something to ‘hop off’ so that the military presence might be thoroughly justified. I also saw something that is rare and that is how the jeering crowd yelling at the occupiers, demanding that they get out of DC, and hurling “F” bombs was how they were unified in their anger, defiance, and solidarity with one another and those being victimized. I observed the law enforcement response to minor and nonexistent incidents in DC, along with the community’s unified anger towards these occupiers, indicating that a response in the form of an uprising is likely to occur. This is not something I advocate for, but I have observed that the defiance and outrage over the presence of Federal Law Enforcement agencies in DC will precipitate a situation that will quickly get out of hand.

We are witnessing cop stops that would usually entail one or two police cars currently demanding five and ten cars for nonexistent and questionable legal violations. I have seen agents with no identification on them (some of them masked) and National Guard units from states where there is a lack of people of-color in the population making those National Guard details whiter. I have seen the over-concentration of Law Enforcement harassing people for no legitimate reasons. I have also seen a unity of anger not seen before from the people of Washington, DC, and along with the discomfort of many of these law enforcement occupiers among a racially and culturally diverse population is like striking matches to gasoline.

We all know that an uprising is precisely what the Trump/MAGA/White Supremacist regime wants to see. They want a rebellion so that they can call up more troops and take over more cities. We need to be aware of the racial fuse being lit that traces back to accusations of Black men raping white women or beating white men. It reaches back to the Charles Stuart hoax that I witnessed and lived through in Roxbury, Massachusetts. The indignity that “Big Balls” experienced has been referenced and represents the global threat of violence to whiteness. The fuse is being lit in cities where there are Black mayors and where cities are perceived as largely Black and non-white. They are trying to light the fuse, and the outrage that people are feeling is making every incident a terribly dangerous one. However, the danger does not come from the residents of DC, but from the occupiers, some of whom are in uniform, and others who are not. The occupation is inflaming and is likely to instigate an incident. This is what I hope doesn’t happen, but at the same time I hope that the sense of defiance and the anger that I have seen will remain intact, vigilant, and unified. And finally, I want to be very clear, this occupation is not an attempt to make our cities safer, but this is a step towards martial law. If you walk or drive around the streets of DC, you will feel it and see it – this is martial law without the declaration. Whether it is declared or not the feelings and appearance is the same. We must continue our defiance and resistance, or we will find that the entire country will be changed and made into a dangerous hostile white plantation once again but for all of us.

Graylan Scott Hagler is an advisor with FOR-USA and the founder and president of Faith Strategies USA. Until retiring from his position in 2022, Hagler was Senior Minister at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, D.C.