Demotes Mayor’s Appointed Police Chief and Removes Limits on Cooperation Between Local Agents and ICE
800 Uniformed National Guard Members Deployed
US Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Director Terry Cole as the new Washington Police Commissioner on Thursday, coinciding with the deployment of 800 National Guard members to the US capital, ordered by President Donald Trump, to combat an alarming crime rate.
“Effective immediately, DEA Administrator Terrence Cole will serve as Emergency Police Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Department for the duration of the presidentially declared emergency. Commissioner Cole will assume all powers and duties conferred upon the Chief of Police of the District of Columbia,” reads the order posted on social media.
The measure thus reduces the capacity of the city’s police force, including its current chief, Pamela Smith, whose activities must now be approved by Cole.
Bondi also lifted a local order issued this Thursday that, while allowing police officers to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, prohibited them from enforcing much of federal immigration law, according to CBS television. It cited, as an example, that Washington, D.C., officers could not search databases to determine a person’s immigration status.
The attorney general thus eliminated the rules that prevented police from arresting people based on administrative immigration warrants issued by ICE—not by judges—and from assisting officers from this controversial force during arrests, meaning they could not proceed to arrest someone based solely on civil immigration violations.
District of Columbia Attorney Brian Schwalb argued in a letter to Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith, who was demoted by Bondi, that the prosecutor’s order “is unlawful.” “You are not legally obligated to comply with it,” he told Smith.
In his letter, released by Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, the attorney general stated that Washington police officers “must follow Smith’s orders and not the orders of any official not designated by the mayor.”
Bondi’s announcement coincides with the deployment, effective Thursday, of 800 uniformed National Guard personnel, an order signed by the White House resident to federalize the city’s security in order to combat crime that, according to local authorities, has not reached alarming levels in any case.
