President Donald Trump said he would go out with police and the military in Washington, D.C., on August 21, 2025. Instead, he made a brief stop at a U.S. Park Police facility on the Anacostia River, where he thanked officers and delivered pizza and hamburgers. No street patrol was reported.
Trump says he will patrol D.C., then visits a police facility instead
President Donald Trump said on Thursday, August 21, 2025, that he planned to go out with police and National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., as part of his administration’s crime crackdown in the capital. By the evening, the public event was a brief visit to a U.S. Park Police operations center on the Anacostia River, where he thanked law enforcement officers and delivered pizza and hamburgers. Reporters did not observe a street patrol.
What Trump said
Earlier in the day, Trump told Todd Starnes, host of “The Todd Starnes Show,” that he would join the patrols. “I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police, and with the military, of course,” he said, according to NPR.
Presidential ride-alongs are rare because of the security needed to move a sitting president, including motorcades, closed routes and advance teams. Visits to police facilities, where officers gather and the president speaks, are more common.
The visit to the Park Police facility
At the Anacostia facility, Trump spoke to officers and Guard members through a handheld microphone. “I feel very safe now, and I’m hearing people are very safe,” he said, adding that “within two weeks … it’s going to be at a level that’s even far superior,” according to NPR.
The wider crackdown
The visit came during a federal surge in the capital that included National Guard deployments and hundreds of federal law enforcement officers assigned to the city. The White House said more than 600 people had been arrested and dozens of homeless encampments cleared.
Washington, D.C., is a federal district, which gives the federal government more authority over its policing than it has in states. City leaders criticized the crackdown as excessive and noted that violent crime in the city had already been declining. The administration argued the surge was making the capital safer.
On the day before Trump’s visit, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were booed by protesters during a visit with Guard members at Union Station.
What comes next
Supporters of the surge want to see more federal gun and violent crime cases and fewer shootings. Critics are watching for civil liberties concerns and whether the federal role expands beyond violent crime. Crime statistics over several weeks, along with arrest and court records, will give a clearer picture of the operation’s effect than any single event.
Source: NPR
