Trump’s Secret Weapon in the DC Police
Police Union boss Gregg Pemberton, lead detective in troubling 2017 protest prosecutions, has long been a Trump partisan
Nobody knows how the struggle between the White House and D.C. authorities over policing in the capital is going to turn out, but one thing is for sure: Donald Trump has a friend in the D.C. Police Union.
This week longtime union head Gregg Pemberton welcomed Trump’s deployment of federal police agents and the National Guard troops onto the city’s streets.
“We stand with the President in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,” Pemberton said. “Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.”
The union chief’s main goal appeared to ratchet up pressure on D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and the city council to fill several hundred vacancies in the police force, bringing it back up to pre-Covid levels. “The federal intervention is a critical stopgap, but the MPD needs proper staffing and support to thrive,” Pemberton said after Trump’s order (but before Attorney General Pam Bondi took the added step of appointing DEA Administrator Terry Cole the District’s “emergency police commissioner,” a power grab that city leaders denounced and immediately contested in court).
UPDATE: the city and the administration arrived at a temporary settlement late Friday afternoon that restores local control of the DC Police.
Few could argue with the department’s need for more cops on the beat. But Pemberton also went on Fox TV’s Laura Ingraham show and echoed Trump’s bloated rhetoric depicting D.C. as a hell hole of “crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.”
“Anyone that lives, works, or travels to D.C. knows that crime is ubiquitous,” Pemberton, a senior MPD detective, claimed on Fox. “It exists in every quadrant of the city, and when you go outside, particularly at night, it's palpable.” He added, “You know there's a concern for your safety, and any time you spend time around here, you're going to run into somebody, you're going to know someone, who's been a victim of crime.”
The mythical “anyone” would not recognize Pemberton’s description of Washington, which suffers violent crime like any big city (and worse than some) but also features people gathering nightly, and safely, in and around the city’s national monuments, its museums, ubiquitous sidewalk cafes, restaurants, bars, theaters and sporting events, or just out walking the dog.
Former D.C. homicide detective Ted Williams was among those who opposed the federal intervention. "While the president may mean well, this is going nowhere fast," he told Fox News Digital. "D.C. is not a war zone. The lawsuits for constitutional violations are coming. This is overkill." He also said criminals will just wait out the deployment.
"Jo Jo and his boys are going on vacation and will return after this crazy experiment ends," he told Fox.
That said, a Washington Post survey of city residents following Trump’s order seemed to prove the adage that, “where you stand is where you sit.” People interviewed in safe neighborhoods were generally outraged by the deployment of federal agents and troops, while those in high crime neighborhoods cautiously welcomed them.
Long History
Pemberton’s embrace of Trump goes back years. He welcomed Trump’s election in 2016, and an opportunity to show his loyalty came early, in January 2017, during a rowdy Inauguration Day protest downtown against the newly elected president. The 234 people who were rounded up and jailed were charged with felony rioting and conspiracy, the latter charge reminiscent of the legendary Chicago Seven trial of antiwar protesters in 1969 (whose convictions were all overturned on appeal). As I reported for Newsweek in June 2018, 21 defendants in the Trump protest cases quickly pleaded guilty to rioting charges. “But even as the Justice Department vigorously—critics say improperly—pursued guilty verdicts in the remaining 200-plus cases, its strategies began falling apart, some over questions of how the government gathered and suppressed exculpatory evidence; others over spurious charges that linked all the demonstrators to an alleged conspiracy by a few to vandalize property and attack police.”
Pemberton was the lead detective on the case. He had led a raid on one activist's home, but even before that, he had railed against "disingenuous activists'" and Black Lives Matter on Twitter and told the conservative One America News Network that he hoped Trump's presidency would "put a stop to" anti-police protests. Defense lawyers challenged his impartiality, and it would turn out that the conspiracy charges were fueled by a selectively edited video taken by the right wing provocateur Project Veritas that was supplied to police and prosecutors.
Pemberton declined comment to me in 2018 and did not respond immediately to a request Friday afternoon asking for his views on Bondi’s appointment of Terry Cole to take over the department. He had earlier welcomed just the intitial 30-day commitment.
But on X, his union welcomed the federal intervention.
“Today Interim Commissioner Terry Cole, alongside DC Police Union Leadership and Washington Metropolitan Police Dept. command staff addressed 1D [First District] evenings [sic] roll call,” the union tweeted with a photo. “During the roll call the message was simple and clear: the Federal government is here to make the city safer and ensure all our members make it home safe.”
Postscript: The D.C. police have a new intelligence chief, Acting Captain Nicole Copeland, according to the MPD press office. Her predecessor, Shane Lamond, was sentenced in June to 18 months in prison for lying to authorities about warning then-Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio about his impending arrest for burning a Black Lives Matter banner in D.C.
A stunt by the man from orange under the big top.