Compassion for Criminals, None for Victims

The other morning, I was walking through Union Station and stopped short. It was clean. Strangely clean. No vagrants harassing commuters or tourists. No drugged-out shouting matches. Not even the ever-present fog of marijuana that seems to hang over every street corner in Washington, D.C. these days. 

But as I took in the rare calm, I did witness one ugly moment. A professionally dressed middle-aged woman took it upon herself to curse out a pair of young National Guardsmen patrolling the station, venting her fury at President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown.  

The young men politely ignored her and went back to their duty. But the exchange said something important: The fury of Washington’s liberal class isn’t directed at the criminals who have terrorized this city for years. It’s reserved for those finally trying to stop them.

That became crystal clear after Trump announced on Aug. 11 that he was placing the Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control and deploying 800 National Guard troops to the capital, using Section 740 of the Home Rule Act. 

As a District of Columbia resident, I’ve grown used to crime being part of the background noise here. Washingtonians talk about it the way Los Angeles residents complain about traffic or New Yorkers grumble about rent prices. It’s constant. It’s expected. And until now, nothing ever changed.

The numbers are staggering. In 2024, the district’s homicide rate hit 27.3 per 100,000. The city’s murder rate is three times higher than Islamabad, Pakistan, and 18 times higher than Havana, Cuba. Juvenile arrests have risen every year since 2020, many for repeat violent crimes. Vehicle theft is triple the national average. Carjackings surged 547% from 2018 to 2023.  

Everyone living here has felt it: the smashed car windows, the youth gangs, the feeling of unease when walking home at night. 

And yet, since Trump’s crackdown, the fashionable outrage has been directed not at the criminals but at those enforcing order. Activists and media elites are treating this as some sort of coup against democracy. Never mind that Washington is a federal district and the federal government has both the authority and the obligation to maintain law and order here. 

We’ve seen the theatrics. A (now former) Department of Justice staffer, Sean Charles Dunn, made a fool of himself by shouting at an officer, throwing a sandwich at him, and awkwardly running away. A local activist, Arianna Evans, was hailed online as a hero after being arrested while “cop watching.” She was, in fact, detained for using a Kids Ride Free card meant for students. Somehow this became a civil rights cause célèbre. 

What bothers me most, though, is the selective compassion. Where is the sympathy for the real victims?

Take the case of Sen. Rand Paul’s staffer who was brutally attacked on H Street in 2023. He and a friend were walking down the street when a man, just released from federal prison the day before, jumped out from behind a corner. The attacker slammed him to the ground and repeatedly stabbed him in the head and chest, leaving him with life-threatening injuries. The young man spent weeks in the hospital, his life forever changed. Yet from the activist class? Silence.  

Or consider Mohammad Anwar, a 66-year-old Uber Eats driver. In March 2021, two teenage girls—just 13 and 15 years old—armed with a Taser, brutally carjacked him near Nationals Park. He was thrown violently to the pavement and died from his injuries. The girls got the maximum juvenile sentence. Detention until age 21. Anwar’s family, meanwhile, got a lifetime of grief.  

And these are just two cases that broke into the news cycle. Thousands of smaller tragedies don’t make headlines: the families shattered by loss, the mothers whose children are sucked into the cycle of violence, the neighborhoods slowly hollowed out by fear. These people don’t get marches or op-eds written in their defense. 

Instead, activists save their outrage for criminals being held accountable to the most basic standards of a civilized society. 

The irony is that they would rather women be unsafe after dark, families risk carjackings, and normal people be terrorized on the Metro if it means Trump doesn’t get credit for restoring order.

As a woman who lives here, I’d prefer not to be robbed or attacked while walking down the street. I don’t care who gets credit. I would have actually preferred it if local leaders had fixed this mess long ago. But they didn’t. They let it spiral to a crisis point. And so the president stepped in. 

The people of Washington deserve better than this misplaced compassion for criminals. They deserve law, order, and the ability to live in peace. And for the first time in a long time, there is a chance we might get here. Safe streets aren’t too much to ask for in the capital of the free world. They are the bare minimum we owe to every family who calls this city home.

Nora Sullivan is a Washington, D.C.-based writer and communications director at Movement Funding. She holds a master’s degree in public affairs from University College Dublin.

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Nora Sullivan.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.