The nearly 10-month presence of National Guard troops in Washington has not helped reduce violent crime in the nation’s capital, according to a new study from the Niskanen Center, a Washington policy think tank.

While the guard’s presence in Washington helped drive down some crime — including a 24 percent decline in opportunistic property crime — the report found it is not the correct tool for violent offenses and comes at a far higher cost than traditional police law enforcement.

“The National Guard deployment was not a waste. It produced a significant reduction in property crime, and it did so quickly, which matters when residents and businesses are demanding visible action,” according to the findings.

“But it was an expensive tool deployed in the wrong places for the wrong types of crime, at a daily cost per person 60 percent higher than an MPD [Metropolitan Police Department] officer, with a hidden productivity cost to the civilian economy,” it adds.

National Guard troops have been deployed in Washington since late last summer, when the federal government ?temporarily took over D.C. law enforcement through ?presidential executive order and announced the D.C. Safe and Beautiful Task Force.

The study found that National Guard troops operated primarily through visibility. Personnel were spread across tourist corridors, transit hubs such as Union Station, federal buildings, monuments, parks and public spaces, which the report said were “exactly the locations where opportunistic property crime tends to occur and where visible deterrence is most likely to be effective.”

But while they were often armed and could detain people, they had no power to arrest.

Furthermore, they were not placed in high-crime, high-poverty neighborhoods where violent crime is most prevalent, with researchers noting the guard’s footprint “was simply misaligned with the geography of violence.”

The report also said violent crimes, including robberies, were already on a downward trend before the guard was deployed in the District, and its presence didn’t move the needle on that metric.

In addition, the guard didn’t free up the city’s police to redeploy to high-crime areas, with researchers noting the “footprint of MPD policing was essentially unchanged.”

The Niskanen Center found that the cost of a National Guard member comes out to roughly $607 per day, compared with a D.C. police officer at $384 per day — with officers having no hidden civilian economy displacement costs, no lodging bills and no return transportation at the end of a tour.

“The $185 million spent on the Guard over five months could instead fund more than 1,300 additional officer-years or, equivalently, more than 3,100 officers for five months,” according to the study.

The findings come as the Trump administration last month said it wants 1,500 additional National Guard troops in Washington ahead of America’s 250th birthday celebration.

The additional troops will push the number of such service members patrolling Washington to 5,000. (Source: The Hill)

Story Date: June 4, 2026