The majority of National Guard soldiers and airmen hold a civilian job full-time while serving part-time as a National Guard member.[4][5] These part-time guardsmen are augmented by a full-time cadre of Active Guard & Reserve (AGR) personnel in both the Army National Guard and Air National Guard, plus Army Reserve Technicians in the Army National Guard and Air Reserve Technicians (ART) in the Air National Guard.[6]
The salient part is what I have bolded and what I want to discuss.
Hundreds of troops have been activated to back up D.C. police and to intimidate monitor demonstrators in California. Now three states are sending their National Guard to D.C., too, and some of them will be ARMED? WTF?
The arming of the troops marks a change since Guard members were first deployed to the district earlier this week. They were tasked with addressing crime and homelessness in the capital.
This is wrong.
National Guard troops are full-time civilians with full-time civilian lives and careers. They serve their country part-time, usually in disaster relief, and in wartime should it come to that (God forbid). When people join the regular military, they are trained in weapons use, because it’s a given that in combat, they will have to use weapons against the nation’s enemies. And likewise, when someone chooses a career in law enforcement, they have weapons, which they might have to use against criminals.
National Guard are not trained as law enforcement. And in D.C. they are not facing “the nation’s enemies.” It is a recipe for disaster to press civilian volunteers into service as armed backup to police in peacetime.
How long will these NG troops be ordered to continue this duty? Weeks? Months? What about their civilian lives and careers? How long until some would-be Rambo finds himself in front of a hostile mob and overreacts?
Democracy in the US is nearing its end. It looks like it will go quietly. Mid-Terms are our best hopes, but that is assuming that those in charge of all three branches of the Federal Government will allow fair elections. I’m dubious.
Maybe something will set off a powder keg and the public, and even the Trump leaning public will push back hard. I have little confidence in that also. I know the diehards won’t, they like this.
Who will be Trump’s successor? They will be the American Putin or Mussolini in all likelihood. Trump is just the very greedy, very petty chump helping to set all of this up. I doubt it will be a family member or some joke like Vance. If it is someone like Ted Cruz or DeSantis we’re done, if it is someone more like Rubio maybe we have a chance.
There’s no emergency in Washington (or any of the other cities Trump has talked about sending troops to). Crime in Washington has actually been declining.
At best, this is Trump seeking a distraction from the Epstein scandal. Much worse is if this is another step in the Republican plan to overthrow democracy.
The Ohio National Guard is sending 150 Military Police (MP) officers. MPs are trained in law enforcement, carry a sidearm as part of their regular law enforcement duties, and many of the National Guard MPs are full-time civilian police officers as well. For that matter, many of the Soldiers in the National Guard are civilian police officers–regardless of their military job.
Exactly. So the fear that they are untrained in law enforcement duties or inexperienced with carrying firearms on duty is unfounded. They are at no greater risk of using excessive force, racial profiling or unnecessary escalation when interacting with the general public than everyday civilian police… on second thought, there are huge reasons for concern.
Which things? Isn’t the supposed reason “to help reestablish law, order and public safety in Washington, DC”? Are additional police assets not arguably a way to accomplish this?
They’re here in DC to intimidate Trump critics, and to potentially spark a violent backlash in order to rationalize further crackdowns. Trump and his goons want violence. Hopefully they won’t get it.
Also to normalize the insertion of military into domestic ‘law enforcement’ (in quotes because while the National Guard can provide a legitimate law enforcement function when requested by state governors in response to mass civil unrest or natural disaster, the times that they have been called up by this and the prior Trump administration, it is been to intimidate protesters and engage in immigration activities rather than responding to any actual threats of civil unrest). However, the National Guard isn’t going to serve as Trump’s would be Schutzstaffel; that is what the big hiring bender for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is for (aided by relaxing hiring standards and increased budget for hiring and retention) which isn’t subject to any restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act or limitations about where they can operate within US borders.
The District of Columbia National Guard includes the 372nd Military Police Battalion (“Red Hand”) comprised of two companies (273rd and 276th), which are likely mostly staffed by people employed by. DCMPD, Capital Police, and other law enforcement agencies operating in or around Washington DC. So, as with pulling FBI and DEA agents from counterintelligence, counterterrorism, drug enforcement investigations, et cetera, they’re taking people away from the law enforcement jobs they are trained and experienced them to do to put them on the street in a different uniform as a ‘show of force’, even though there is no massive ‘crime wave’ in Washington DC, violent crime rates while high in comparison to the mean, are at a historic low, and all of this was apparently spurred on by DOGE staffer Edward Coristine, a.k.a. “Big Balls” reportedly getting carjacked near Dupont Circle at 3 am. (Why a government civil employee in an administrative role would be cruising such a high crime area at such a peculiar hour has yet to be explained but I’m sure there is a perfectly normal and not-at-all suspect reason for it.)
Multiple governors (all Republicans from deep ‘red’ states) calling up and sending National Guard units to another state or territory for anything short of mass civil disturbance or in a humanitarian aid role is so unprecedented I’m not even sure it has ever happened in the modern era (since the Militia Act of 1903) outside of joint training exercises. It is certainly an abuse of the purpose of state militias and of the people who have to leave their families and jobs to participate in this political stunt.
Tell me how many of the 1450 are being armed? The article in the OP says that “some” of the soldiers will be armed in accordance with their training and mission. If the “some” being armed are other than police officers, the concerns in the OP are substantiated. If they aren’t then its baseless. As it stands, the timeline of reports that some soldiers will be armed lines up precisely with the requests for military police. It is not unreasonable to believe that its the MPs who will be armed. Ignoring or excluding these facts are either irresponsible reporting or straught up fear mongering.
Im not sane washing the deployment of troops to DC. Im adding sanity to your ilinformed OP. You said that national guard troops are not trained for policing or carrying weapons around civilians. I proved to you that this is not always the case, and the specific personnel being deployed for that work are trained to do both.
Im not justifying their deployment. Im refuting your ignorant claim by reminding you that MPs exist, and showing you that MPs are being deployed in addition to the other soldiers.
And failing to acknowledge that a state deploying their national guard out of state to “help” a local PD that did not request help is out of line is but willful ignorance.
Further complicating this issue is the Washington DC NG unit called up is a military police company. A lot of them have as their civilian jobs, no surprise, cops. So that means some have been called away from the police force to be soldiers sent to work as police in DC. I wish I could give you numbers, but I recall from my days in the Army such statistics were classified.
I just won a $20 bet with my across-the-hall neighbor who didn’t believe anyone could be so dumb and clueless. 