As a 20-year DC police veteran, I would never serve Trump.

What two decades on the force taught me about this authoritarian takeover.

Photo Credit: Hurca!

I served in Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police Department for more than 20 years. My job was to infiltrate gang networks, execute drug busts, and put dangerous criminals in jail. Over that time, I saw the real toll that criminals can take on the city, and the importance of solid police work in helping root them out. I saw that good policing can—and does—make our communities safer, more livable, and more prosperous.

Donald Trump’s federal takeover of MPD spits in the face of all that.

This week Trump announced he would deploy federal law enforcement and even National Guard troops to patrol the streets of DC. He also said he was federalizing MPD, bringing its officers—my former colleagues—under the express control of the president. It was an unprecedented federal takeover without any apparent cause, and an obvious show of force intended to intimidate the president’s enemies.

By any standard, Trump’s move makes no sense. Federal law states that the president can only take control of DC’s law enforcement on an emergency basis, and there’s no emergency happening on the streets of DC right now. Sure, there’s crime, homelessness, and other problems you see in any city. But the crime rate has actually been steadily falling. Trump’s not trying to fight crime; he’s trying to assert dominance.

We’ve already seen him do this. In Los Angeles, Trump deployed masked federal agents to snatch people up off the streets, knowing this would cause a backlash. When that backlash came in the form of protests by LA residents, he used it as a pretext to deploy the military, saying “the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a law and order guy. I self-deployed to the Capitol on January 6, where I was almost killed by the pro-Trump mob that the president summoned there to overturn the election he lost. Once I spoke out, testifying to the January 6 Committee, I was mobbed with hate and death threats by Trump’s supporters.

Here’s what I learned from that experience: Trump’s “back the blue” shtick—his claim that he’s a “law and order” president—is complete bullshit. He set the mob against cops that day, with five of them ultimately dying. Then he gave a blanket pardon to all 1,500 convicted rioters upon reentering office, including the man who shouted for my death as the mob was beating me. Trump is the most anti-police president this county has ever known.

From my decades working on the force at MPD, I can tell you that the officers don’t want this. Cops don’t sign up for this job and put the uniform on every day so they can be used as political pawns in Trump’s power games. He can say the force is federalized—and his lackeys can take steps to make that official on paper—but the vast majority of good cops on the beat aren’t loyal to Trump personally, and they never will be. They’re there to do their jobs, take in criminals, and help make the city safer.

I wouldn’t expect Trump—a man who's been indicted four times on 88 felony counts, who has incited a mob to beat cops and attacked officers personally; a career criminal surrounded by career criminals, whose toadies in Congress won’t even honor cops’ service with a memorial—to understand any of that.

Michael Fanone is a former police officer who defended the Capitol on January 6. He is an Advisory Board Member and Spokesman for Home of the Brave.